Free Science Fiction Classics on the Web: Huxley, Orwell, Asimov, Gaiman & Beyond

in Audio Books, Books, Sci Fi | March 26th, 2012

Today we’re bring­ing you a roundup of some of the great Sci­ence Fic­tion, Fan­ta­sy and Dystopi­an clas­sics avail­able on the web. And what bet­ter way to get start­ed than with Aldous Hux­ley read­ing a dra­ma­tized record­ing of his 1932 nov­el, Brave New World. The read­ing aired on the CBS Radio Work­shop in 1956. You can lis­ten to Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

(FYI: You can down­load Hux­ley’s orig­i­nal work — as opposed to the dra­ma­tized ver­sion — in audio by sign­ing up for a Free Tri­al with Audible.com, and that applies to oth­er books men­tioned here as well.)


Lit­tle known fact. Aldous Hux­ley once gave George Orwell French lessons at Eton. And, 17 years after the release of Brave New World, Hux­ley’s pupil pub­lished 1984. The sem­i­nal dystopi­an work may be one of the most influ­en­tial nov­els of the 20th cen­tu­ry, and it’s almost cer­tain­ly the most impor­tant polit­i­cal nov­el from that peri­od. You can find it avail­able on the web in three for­mats: Free eText — Free Audio Book – Free Movie.

In 1910, J. Sear­le Daw­ley wrote and direct­ed Franken­stein. It took him three days to shoot the 12-minute film (when most films were actu­al­ly shot in just one day). It marked the first time that Mary Shelley’s clas­sic mon­ster tale (text — audio) was ever adapt­ed to film. And, some­what notably, Thomas Edi­son had a hand (albeit it an indi­rect one) in mak­ing the film. The first Franken­stein film was shot at Edi­son Stu­dios, the pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny owned by the famous inven­tor.

lovecraft hp

Stephen King and Joyce Car­ol Oates — they both pay homage to H.P. Love­craft and his great tales. And you can too by spend­ing time with his col­lect­ed works, avail­able in etext for­mats here and audio for­mats here (Free Mp3 Zip File – Free Stream).

Philip K. Dick pub­lished 44 nov­els and 121 sto­ries dur­ing his short life­time, solid­i­fy­ing his posi­tion as one of Amer­i­ca’s top sci-fi writ­ers. If you’re not inti­mate­ly famil­iar with his nov­els, then you almost cer­tain­ly know major films based on Dick’s work – Blade Run­ner, Total Recall, A Scan­ner Dark­ly and  Minor­i­ty Report. To get you acquaint­ed with PKD’s writ­ing, we have culled togeth­er 14 short sto­ries for your enjoy­ment.

eTexts (find down­load instruc­tions here)

Audio

Back in the late 1930s, Orson Welles launched The Mer­cury The­atre on the Air, a radio pro­gram ded­i­cat­ed to bring­ing dra­mat­ic, the­atri­cal pro­duc­tions to the Amer­i­can air­waves. The show had a fair­ly short run, last­ing from 1938 to 1941. But it made its mark. Dur­ing these few years, The Mer­cury The­atre aired The War of the Worlds, an episode nar­rat­ed by Welles that led many Amer­i­cans to believe their coun­try was under Mar­t­ian attack. The leg­endary pro­duc­tion, per­haps the most famous ever aired on Amer­i­can radio, was based on H.G. Wells’ ear­ly sci-fi nov­el, and you can lis­ten to the broad­cast right here.

Between 1951 and 1953, Isaac Asi­mov pub­lished three books that formed the now famous Foun­da­tion Tril­o­gy. Many con­sid­ered it a mas­ter­work in sci­ence fic­tion, and that view became offi­cial doc­trine in 1966 when the tril­o­gy received a spe­cial Hugo Award for Best All-Time Series, notably beat­ing out Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Even­tu­al­ly, the BBC decid­ed to adapt Asimov’s tril­o­gy to the radio, dra­ma­tiz­ing the series in eight one-hour episodes that aired between May and June 1973. Thanks to The Inter­net Archive you can down­load the full pro­gram as a zip file, or stream it online:

Part 1 |MP3| Part 2 |MP3| Part 3 |MP3| Part 4 |MP3| Part 5 |MP3| Part 6 |MP3| Part 7 |MP3| Part 8 |MP3|

Before the days of Har­ry Pot­ter, gen­er­a­tions of young read­ers let their imag­i­na­tions take flight with The Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia, a series of sev­en fan­ta­sy nov­els writ­ten by C. S. Lewis. Like his friend J.R.R. Tolkien, Lewis served on the Eng­lish fac­ul­ty at Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty and took part in the Inklings, an Oxford lit­er­ary group ded­i­cat­ed to fic­tion and fan­ta­sy. Pub­lished between 1950 and 1956, The Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia has sold over 100 mil­lion copies in 47 lan­guages, delight­ing younger and old­er read­ers world­wide.

Now, with the appar­ent bless­ing of the C.S. Lewis estate, the sev­en vol­ume series is avail­able in a free audio for­mat. There are 101 audio record­ings in total, each aver­ag­ing 30 min­utes and read by Chris­si Hart. Down­load the com­plete audio via the web or RSS Feed.

Neil Gaiman has emerged as one of today’s best fan­ta­sy writ­ers. He has made comics respectable and pub­lished nov­els, includ­ing one that will be adapt­ed by HBO. A great deal of his out­put, though, has been in the form of short sto­ries, some avail­able on the web in text for­mat, oth­ers in audio.

Audio & Video

  • “Har­le­quin Valen­tine” – Free Audio at Last.FM
  • “How to Talk to Girls at Par­ties” – Free MP3
  • “Orange” (read live) – Free Video
  • “Oth­er Peo­ple” (read live) – Free Video
  • The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Moun­tains – Free Audio
  • The Grave­yard Book (a nov­el read live with illus­tra­tions) – Free Video
  • “Troll Bridge” (read live, starts at 4:00 mark) – Free iTunes
  • “A Study in Emer­ald” – Free iTunes

Oth­er Gaiman works can be down­load via Audible.com’s spe­cial Free Tri­al. More details here.

Text

Between 1982 and 2000, Rudy Ruck­er wrote a series of four sci-fi nov­els that formed The Ware Tetral­o­gy. The first two books in the series – Soft­ware and Wet­ware – won the Philip K. Dick Award for best nov­el. And William Gib­son has called Ruck­er “a nat­ur­al-born Amer­i­can street sur­re­al­ist” or, more sim­ply, one sui gener­is dude. And now the even bet­ter part: Ruck­er (who hap­pens to be the great-great-great-grand­son of Hegel) has released The Ware Tetral­o­gy under a Cre­ative Com­mons license, and you can down­load the full text for free in PDF and RTF for­mats. In total, the col­lec­tion runs 800+ pages.

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The Art and Science of Violin Making

in Music, Technology | March 23rd, 2012

Sam Zyg­muntow­icz is a world-renowned luthi­er, or mak­er of stringed instru­ments. Joshua Bell and Yo-Yo Ma play his instru­ments. In 2003, a vio­lin he made for Isaac Stern sold at auc­tion for $130,000–the high­est price ever for an instru­ment by a liv­ing luthi­er. To sum up Zyg­muntow­icz’s stature as a builder of fine instru­ments, Tim J. Ingles, direc­tor of musi­cal instru­ments for Sothe­by’s, told Forbes mag­a­zine: “There are no more than six peo­ple who are at his lev­el.”

Zyg­muntow­icz is the sub­ject of a 2007 book by John March­ese called The Vio­lin Mak­er: Find­ing a Cen­turies-Old Tra­di­tion in a Brook­lyn Work­shop. In one pas­sage, March­ese writes about the mys­te­ri­ous acousti­cal qual­i­ties of the vio­lin, which he likens to a mag­ic box:

The laws that gov­ern the build­ing of this box were decid­ed upon a short time before the laws of grav­i­ty were dis­cov­ered, and they have remained remark­ably unchanged since then. It is com­mon­ly thought that the vio­lin is the most per­fect acousti­cal­ly of all musi­cal instru­ments. It is quite uncom­mon to find some­one who can explain exact­ly why. One physi­cist who spent decades try­ing to under­stand why the vio­lin works so well said that it was the world’s most ana­lyzed musi­cal instrument–and the least under­stood.

The most famous, and fabled, stringed instru­ments are those that were made in Cre­mona, Italy, in the late 17th and ear­ly 18th cen­turies by Anto­nio Stradi­vari and a hand­ful of oth­er mas­ters. In Zyg­muntow­icz’s work­shop in the Park Slope neigh­bor­hood of Brook­lyn, New York, there is a bumper stick­er that says, “My oth­er fid­dle is a Strad.” Behind the joke lies a seri­ous point. Zyg­muntow­icz wants great musi­cians to use his instruments–not because they are cheap­er than a Stradi­var­ius, but because they are bet­ter. He’s try­ing to break a bar­ri­er that has been firm­ly in place for cen­turies. “I call it the ‘Strad Ceil­ing,’ ” he told NPR in 2008. “You know, if some­one has a Strad in their case, will they play your fid­dle?”

Although Joshua Bell owns a Zyg­muntow­icz, he most­ly calls on the luthi­er to make fine adjust­ments to his Stradi­var­ius. But Eugene Druck­er of the Emer­son String Quar­tet told Forbes that he actu­al­ly prefers his Zyg­muntow­icz to his 1686 Stradi­var­ius in cer­tain sit­u­a­tions. “In a large space like Carnegie Hall,” he said, “the Zyg­muntow­icz is supe­ri­or to my Strad. It has more pow­er and punch.” In spite of the mys­tique that sur­rounds Stradi­vari and the oth­er Cre­mona mas­ters, Zyg­muntow­icz sees no rea­son why a mod­ern luthi­er could­n’t make a bet­ter instru­ment. “There isn’t any inef­fa­ble essence,” he told the The New York Times ear­li­er this year, “only a phys­i­cal object that works bet­ter or worse in a vari­ety of cir­cum­stances.”

For a quick intro­duc­tion to Zyg­muntow­icz’s work, watch a new video, above, by pho­tog­ra­ph­er and film­mak­er Dustin Cohen, and an ear­li­er piece by Jon Groat of Newsweek, below. And to dive deep­er into the sci­ence of the vio­lin, be sure to vis­it the “Strad3D” Web site, which fea­tures fas­ci­nat­ing excerpts from Eugene Schenkman’s film about Zyg­muntow­icz’s col­lab­o­ra­tion with physi­cist George Bissinger on a project using 3D laser scans, CT scans and oth­er tech­nolo­gies to ana­lyze the acousti­cal prop­er­ties of vio­lins by Stradi­vari and Giuseppe Guarneri. As Zyg­muntow­icz told Strings mag­a­zine in 2006, “What makes those vio­lins work is more know­able now than it ever was.” H/T Kot­tke

Note: if you have any prob­lems watch­ing the video below, you can watch an alter­nate ver­sion here.

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Tom Schiller’s 1975 Journey Through Henry Miller’s Bathroom (NSFW)

in Books, Film, Literature | March 23rd, 2012

No sur­prise, you might think, that a doc­u­men­tary about the man who wrote Trop­ic of Can­cer would mer­it an NSFW label. But what if I were to tell you that this par­tic­u­lar doc­u­men­tary spends almost every one of its 35 min­utes in Hen­ry Miller’s bath­room? Yet the writer has imbued this bath­room with a great deal of noto­ri­ety, at least in his cir­cles, thanks to how care­ful­ly he adorned its walls with visu­al curiosi­ties. Fol­low­ing its sub­ject as he grunts him­self awake, puts on a robe, and tells the sto­ries behind what­ev­er the cam­era sees, Hen­ry Miller Asleep and Awake uses these bath­room walls as a gate­way into his mind. We see repro­duc­tions of paint­ings by Hierony­mus Bosch and Paul Gau­guin. We see por­traits of Miller’s per­son­al­ly inspir­ing lumi­nar­ies, like Her­mann Hesse and the less­er-known Swiss mod­ernist nov­el­ist Blaise Cen­drars. And of course, we see a still from the Trop­ic of Can­cer movie and the expect­ed amount of nude pin-ups. “I put these here express­ly for the peo­ple who want to be shocked,” Miller explains.

Tom Schiller, the doc­u­men­tary’s direc­tor, made his name cre­at­ing short films for Sat­ur­day Night Live. Obscu­ri­ty-ori­ent­ed cinephiles may know him best as the direc­tor of Noth­ing Lasts For­ev­er, a 1984 com­e­dy fea­tur­ing Bill Mur­ray and Dan Aykroyd that, to this day, lan­guish­es some­where in Warn­er Broth­ers’ legal depart­ment. Schiller received this guid­ed tour of Miller’s bath­room — and, by exten­sion, his mem­o­ry — in 1975, when the author had reached his 82nd year and fifth mar­riage; his wife, Hiroko “Hoki” Toku­da, appears in one of the wal­l’s pho­tographs. He also points out a blown-up cov­er of a favorite Junichi­ro Taniza­ki nov­el, a scrap of Chi­nese text for which every Chi­nese vis­i­tor has a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent trans­la­tion, an image of a leg­en­dar­i­ly randy Bud­dhist monk, dra­mat­ic por­traits of Chi­nese actress­es and Japan­ese bar girls, and — in the absence of reli­gious iconog­ra­phy of any oth­er kind — count­less rep­re­sen­ta­tions of the Bud­dha. And if you’d like to see some­thing else from Asia pre­sent­ed in an espe­cial­ly Milleresque spir­it, don’t miss when Schiller’s cam­era turns toward the show­er. Just make sure you’re not watch­ing at work. Seri­ous­ly.

The films has been added to our big col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online. Look under Doc­u­men­tary.

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

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Filmmaker James Cameron Going 36,000 Feet Under the Sea

in Film, Science | March 23rd, 2012

This week, film­mak­er James Cameron (Titan­ic, Avatar, The Abyss) hopes to go where only two men have gone before, div­ing 36,000 feet beneath the sea, to the Mar­i­ana Trench, the deep­est known place on Earth. It’s basi­cal­ly Mount Ever­est in the inverse. Cameron plans to make the his­toric solo jour­ney in The Deepsea Chal­lenger, a 24-foot-long ver­ti­cal tor­pe­do, built secret­ly in Aus­tralia over the last year eight years. (More on that here.) And when he reach­es his des­ti­na­tion, he’ll spend six hours shoot­ing 3‑D video of the trench and col­lect­ing rocks and rare sea crea­tures with a robot­ic arm. Or so that’s the plan.

Above, James Cameron describes his mis­sion in a Nation­al Geo­graph­ic video. Below, you’ll find an ani­ma­tion of the Mar­i­ana Trench dive cre­at­ed by The Nation­al Ocean­ic and Atmos­pher­ic Admin­is­tra­tion (NOAA). You can track Cameron’s voy­age on the Nat­Geo web­site and find a detailed descrip­tion of the actu­al dive right here.

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Terry Gilliam’s Debut Animated Film, Storytime

in Animation, Comedy, Film | March 22nd, 2012

Ter­ry Gilliam’s fun­ny debut film, Sto­ry­time, fea­tures three ear­ly exam­ples of the Mon­ty Python ani­ma­tor’s twist­ed take on life. The film is usu­al­ly dat­ed 1968, but accord­ing to some sources it was actu­al­ly put togeth­er sev­er­al years lat­er. The clos­ing seg­ment, “A Christ­mas Card,” was cre­at­ed in late 1968 for a spe­cial Christ­mas-day broad­cast of the chil­dren’s pro­gram Do Not Adjust Your Set, but the oth­er two seg­ments– “Don the Cock­roach” and “The Albert Ein­stein Story”–were broad­cast on the 1971–1972 British and Amer­i­can pro­gram The Mar­ty Feld­man Com­e­dy Machine, which fea­tured Gilliam’s Pythonesque ani­ma­tion sequences at the begin­ning and end of each show. What­ev­er the date of pro­duc­tion, Sto­ry­time (now added to our col­lec­tion of 675 Free Movies Online in the Ani­ma­tion Sec­tion) is an engag­ing stream-of-con­scious­ness jour­ney through Gilliam’s delight­ful­ly absurd imag­i­na­tion. If you’re a Ter­ry Gilliam fan, don’t miss these oth­er relat­ed items:

Ter­ry Gilliam Shows You How to Make Your Own Cutout Ani­ma­tion

Ter­ry Gilliam: The Dif­fer­ence Between Kubrick (Great Film­mak­er) and Spiel­berg (Less So)

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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Cinema History by Titles & Numbers

in Animation, Art, Film | March 22nd, 2012

Between the sim­ple card open­ing D.W. Grif­fith’s 1916 Intol­er­ance to the vibrat­ing neon first onslaught of Gas­par Noé’s 2009 Enter the Void, Ian Albinson’s A Brief His­to­ry of Title Design packs in count­less icon­ic, rep­re­sen­ta­tive, and oth­er­wise fas­ci­nat­ing exam­ples of words that pre­cede movies. As Edi­tor-in-Chief of the blog Art of the Title, Albinson dis­tin­guish­es him­self as just the per­son you’d want to cut togeth­er a video like this. His selec­tions move through the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry from The Phan­tom of the Opera, King Kong, and Cit­i­zen Kane, whose stark state­li­ness now brings to mind the very archi­tec­ture of the old movie palaces where they debuted, to the delib­er­ate, tex­tur­al phys­i­cal­i­ty of The Trea­sure of Sier­ra Madre and Lady in the Lake. Then comes the late-fifties/ear­ly-six­ties mod­ernist cool of The Man With the Gold­en Arm and Dr. No, fol­lowed by Dr. Strangelove and Bul­litt, both of which show­case the work of Pablo Fer­ro — a liv­ing chap­ter of title design his­to­ry in his own right. After the bold intro­duc­tions to the block­busters of the sev­en­ties and eight­ies — Star Wars, Sat­ur­day Night Fever, Alien, The Ter­mi­na­tor — but before the fresh­ly extrav­a­gant design work of the cur­rent cen­tu­ry, we find a few intrigu­ing­ly mar­gin­al films of the nineties. How many reg­u­lar cinephiles retain fond mem­o­ries of Freaked, Mim­ic, and The Island of Dr. More­au I don’t know, but clear­ly those pic­tures sit near and dear to the hearts of title enthu­si­asts.

An elab­o­rate work of motion graph­ics in its own right, Evan Seitz’s 123Films takes the titles of four­teen films — not their title sequences, but their actu­al titles — and ani­mates them in numer­i­cal order. If that does­n’t make sense, spend thir­ty sec­onds watch­ing it, and make sure you’re lis­ten­ing. Does­n’t that calm­ly malev­o­lent com­put­er voice sound famil­iar? Does the col­or scheme of that “4” look famil­iar, espe­cial­ly if you read a lot of com­ic books as a kid? And cer­tain­ly you’ll remem­ber which of the sens­es it takes to see dead peo­ple. This video comes as the fol­low-up to Seitz’s ABCin­e­ma, a sim­i­lar movie guess­ing game pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured on Open Cul­ture. Where that one got you think­ing about film alpha­bet­i­cal­ly, this one will get you think­ing about it numer­i­cal­ly.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Brief Visu­al Intro­duc­tion to Saul Bass’ Cel­e­brat­ed Title Designs

450 Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, etc.

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

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Tour the Amazon with Google Street View; No Passport Needed

in Google, Travel | March 22nd, 2012

Google Street View launched in 2007, giv­ing web users the abil­i­ty to tour neigh­bor­hoods with a series of 360° panoram­ic maps. The tech­nol­o­gy seemed pret­ty straight­for­ward … until peo­ple real­ized that it was­n’t. Since ‘07, techies have fig­ured out some cool and unex­pect­ed uses for the soft­ware, and Google began using it to offer vir­tu­al tours of famous his­tor­i­cal sites (Pom­peii, Stone­henge and Ver­sailles) and then inter­na­tion­al muse­ums, rang­ing from the MoMA and Met in New York City, to the Uffizi Gallery in Flo­rence, and the Van Gogh Muse­um in Ams­ter­dam. (More on that here.) And now they’re push­ing the lim­its of the tech­nol­o­gy just a bit fur­ther.

Yes­ter­day Google announced that Street View will let you expe­ri­ence the beau­ty and diver­si­ty of the Ama­zon basin. Once you enter Street View’s Ama­zon tour, you can:

Take a vir­tu­al boat ride down the main sec­tion of the Rio Negro, and float up into the small­er trib­u­taries where the for­est is flood­ed. Stroll along the paths of Tumbi­ra, the largest com­mu­ni­ty in the Reserve, or vis­it some of the oth­er com­mu­ni­ties who invit­ed us to share their lives and cul­tures. Enjoy a hike along an Ama­zon for­est trail and see where Brazil nuts are har­vest­ed. You can even see a for­est crit­ter if you look hard enough!

The video above explains how the project got start­ed and how the images were gath­ered, while also offer­ing a quick demo of the online expe­ri­ence. You can start your voy­age to the Ama­zon here, or head to Google’s blog to learn more about this project cre­at­ed in part­ner­ship with the Ama­zonas Sus­tain­able Foun­da­tion (FAS).

Note: Are you a writer inter­est­ed in edu­ca­tion­al tech­nol­o­gy and open edu­ca­tion­al resources? And, do you want to write for Open Cul­ture? Then drop us a line.

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‘Keep Calm and Carry On’: The Story of the Iconic World War II Poster

in Art, Books, History | March 21st, 2012

In an old Vic­to­ri­an rail­way sta­tion in the pic­turesque vil­lage of Alnwick, Northum­ber­land, just South of the Scot­tish bor­der, is a one-of-a-kind book­store called Barter Books. The New States­man called it “The British Library of sec­ond­hand books.” A mod­el rail­way winds along a track laid out across row upon row of book­shelves in what was once the depar­ture hall. Dur­ing the win­ter months, cus­tomers sit and read by a roar­ing fire in the old wait­ing room.

One day in 2000, the store’s co-own­er, Stu­art Man­ley, was search­ing through a dusty box of books that were bought at auc­tion, when he found a fold­ed-up piece of paper at the bot­tom. He took the paper out, opened it and showed it to his wife and busi­ness part­ner, Mary Man­ley. Nei­ther of them had seen it before. It said: “Keep Calm and Car­ry On.” As the BBC’s Stu­art Hugh­es lat­er put it, “the sim­ple five-word mes­sage is the very mod­el of British restraint and stiff upper lip.”

It turned out that the poster was one of mil­lions that were print­ed on the eve of World War II but nev­er dis­trib­uted. The Man­leys decid­ed to frame the poster and hang it in the shop. Before long, cus­tomers were offer­ing to buy it, so the Man­leys decid­ed to print some copies. Then in 2005 a nation­al news­pa­per sup­ple­ment rec­om­mend­ed the poster as a Christ­mas gift and, as Stu­art Man­ley put it, “all hell broke loose.”

Since that time, tens of thou­sands of the posters have been sold, and the slo­gan has found its way onto t‑shirts and cof­fee mugs and has been the inspi­ra­tion of count­less par­o­dies like “Keep Calm and Par­ty On” and “Freak Out and Run Like Hell.” Removed from its orig­i­nal con­text, the wartime slo­gan has an uncan­ny res­o­nance in today’s world. “It’s very good, almost zen,” psy­chol­o­gist Les­ley Prince told the BBC. “It works as a per­son­al mantra now.”

For the sto­ry of this most improb­a­ble of 21st cen­tu­ry icons, watch the three-minute film above, which was made by Temu­jin Doran in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the design and pro­duc­tion stu­dio Nation.

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Van Gogh to Rothko in 30 Seconds

in Apple, Art, iPad | March 21st, 2012

What if you took great works of art, stacked them side by side, and had them tell a sto­ry? You’d have a decid­ed­ly art­ful video … and a great teas­er for the new art­Cir­cles iPad app that brings you col­lec­tions of images curat­ed by well-known fig­ures includ­ing Yves Behar (named one of the “World’s 7 Most Impor­tant Peo­ple in Design”) and John Mae­da (pres­i­dent of Rhode Island School of Design). The app is free on iTunes, and if you pick up the new iPad with reti­na dis­play, you can see where the device real­ly excels. Or at least that was my expe­ri­ence when I gave it a spin.

And while we’re on the top­ic, here’s anoth­er free app worth check­ing out: “The Life of Art.” Pro­duced by the Get­ty Muse­um in LA, the “Life of Art” gives users a chance to under­stand how objects end up in a muse­um in the first place. Pho­tog­ra­phy, ani­ma­tions, video, and 360 degree rota­tions nar­rate the artis­tic lives of these objects. Find the app here. H/T Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free: The Guggen­heim Puts 65 Mod­ern Art Books Online

Google App Enhances Muse­um Vis­its; Launched at the Get­ty

MoMA Puts Pol­lock, Rothko & de Koon­ing on Your iPad

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Michael Pollan’s Book, Food Rules, Brought to Life with Animation

in Animation, Books | March 21st, 2012

If you’ve lis­tened to the past decade’s con­ver­sa­tions about food, you’ll have noticed that eat­ing, always a pur­suit, has sud­den­ly become a sub­ject as well. One flank of this move­ment of enthu­si­asts has tak­en up Michael Pol­lan, a pro­fes­sor at UC Berke­ley’s jour­nal­ism school, as its lead­ing light. Whether they agree or dis­agree with his prin­ci­ples, intel­lec­tu­al­ly engaged eaters who don’t have at least a basic famil­iar­i­ty with Pol­lan’s books such as The Omni­vore’s Dilem­ma and In Defense of Food can hard­ly con­sid­er them­selves con­ver­sant in the food ques­tions and con­tro­ver­sies of the day.

Both Pol­lan’s poten­tial boost­ers and detrac­tors alike can get them­selves up to speed with his lat­est vol­ume, Food Rules: An Eater’s Man­u­al, which boils down his culi­nary weltan­schau­ung into a series of sim­ple sen­tences, includ­ing “Eat foods made from ingre­di­ents that you can pic­ture in their raw state or grow­ing in nature,” “Pay more, eat less,” and, “The whiter the bread, the soon­er you’ll be dead.” Pol­lan also takes posi­tions on entire­ly gnarli­er issues, such as the effi­cien­cy (or lack there­of) of agribusi­ness, and that’s when ani­ma­tors like Mar­i­ja Jaci­movic and Benoit Detalle pro­vide their enliven­ing ser­vices. In the two-minute video above, Jaci­movic and Detalle use pieces of actu­al food to illus­trate Pol­lan’s cri­tique of large-scale food pro­duc­tion.

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

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Man Flies Like a Bird in The Hague

in Random, Technology | March 21st, 2012

First a Robot Flies Like a Bird. Then Humans Fly with the Birds. Now Man Flies Like a Bird with Cus­tom-Made Wings. It’s the third part of our unplanned tril­o­gy. Accord­ing to Wired, Dutch engi­neer Jarno Smeets took flight using “using videogame con­trollers, an Android phone and cus­tom-built wings,” and it all hap­pened this past week­end at a park in The Hague. There’s appar­ent­ly some spec­u­la­tion about the authen­tic­i­ty of the video. But Wired seems to think it will hold up. And, no mat­ter what, we’re inclined to sus­pend dis­be­lief and just enjoy this lit­tle moment.

Note: Are you a writer inter­est­ed in edu­ca­tion­al tech­nol­o­gy and open edu­ca­tion­al resources? And, do you want to write for Open Cul­ture? Then drop us a line.

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