Art in “Augmented Reality” at The Getty Museum

in Art | October 26th, 2010

We’re get­ting clos­er to a world where you can ask: why go to a muse­um when it can come to you? This sum­mer, the Get­ty Muse­um used Aug­ment­ed Real­i­ty (AR) tech­nol­o­gy to show­case one of the most com­plex objects in its col­lec­tion – The Augs­burg Dis­play Cab­i­net (or Kabi­nettschrank) built around 1630. As shown above, the AR tech­nol­o­gy lets remote users view art in 3D, using just their web cam and a piece of paper to con­trol the expe­ri­ence. You can watch the demo above, or bet­ter yet, test dri­ve the whole expe­ri­ence with the instruc­tions found here.

via @drszucker

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Zoom­ing into Ital­ian Mas­ter­pieces

A Vir­tu­al Tour of the Sis­tine Chapel

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Shakespeare in the Original Voice

in Literature, Theatre | October 26th, 2010

This fall, Paul Meier, a the­atre pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Kansas, is work­ing with stu­dents to stage the first-ever Amer­i­can ren­di­tion of a Shake­speare play – A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream – in its orig­i­nal pro­nun­ci­a­tion. As The His­to­ry Blog writes, there have only been “three oth­er pro­duc­tions of orig­i­nal pro­nun­ci­a­tion (OP) Shake­speare before this one, 2 at The Globe the­ater in Lon­don, and 1 at Cam­bridge in the 1950s.” But this dif­fi­cult project became pos­si­ble when Meier and his stu­dents start­ed work­ing with David Crys­tal, a lin­guis­tics schol­ar who wrote Pro­nounc­ing Shake­speare (Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty Press) in 2005. Pri­or to the KU pro­duc­tion, Crys­tal con­sult­ed on a pro­duc­tion of Romeo and Juli­et at the Globe the­atre on London’s South Bank (men­tioned above), and you can lis­ten to audio clips tak­en from that Eng­lish per­for­mance right here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Did Shake­speare Real­ly Look Like

Shake­speare Free on the iPhone

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The Milky Way in 360 Degrees

in Science | October 25th, 2010

Stéphane Guis­ard trav­eled to the Paranal obser­va­to­ry, sit­u­at­ed in Chile’s remote Ata­ca­ma desert, in search of the “dark­est sky.” The result? Some amaz­ing zoomable, fish­eye images that reveal the dark­est of dark skies (includ­ing a glimpse of the Gegen­schein). And then also this “byprod­uct”: a 360 degree panoram­ic view of the Milky Way that lies on the dark sky hori­zon. You can view Los Cie­los de Chile here.

Please note that the page can take a lit­tle time to load. But once you’re there, you can tog­gle around the images and con­trol the views.

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Free Movies: Watch the Classics & Gems Online

in Film | October 24th, 2010

Almost a year ago, we start­ed scour­ing the web for free movies — for films worth your pre­cious time. We start­ed with 75, and now we’re above 200. What will you find on the ever-grow­ing list of Free Movies Online? Films by Orson Welles, Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la, Alfred Hitch­cock, Stan­ley Kubrick, David Lynch, Bri­an DePal­ma, Jean-Luc Godard, Andrei Tarkovsky, Fritz Lang, Elia Kazan, Howard Hawks, Ida Lupino, Ken Loach, Aki­ra Kuro­sawa, Bil­ly Wilder, and Mar­tin Scors­ese. The list cov­ers many dif­fer­ent gen­res (come­dies, film noir, indies, doc­u­men­taries, short and ani­mat­ed films, even some note­wor­thy B movies) and spans the entire his­to­ry of cin­e­ma, mov­ing from ear­ly silent films to con­tem­po­rary movies. It also fea­tures bril­liant per­for­mances by major actress­es and actors — too many to name right here. For copy­right rea­sons, there’s gen­er­al­ly a heavy empha­sis on the clas­sics. If you have time to spare, check out the full col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online. And if we’re miss­ing any good ones, please feel free to send us your tips or add them to the com­ments sec­tion below.

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The Office Meets the Twilight Zone

in Comedy, Film | October 22nd, 2010

‘The Black Hole’ runs two min­utes. Be sure to hang with it until the end. H/T @ellmcgirt

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Nikon Small World Photography: The Winners

in Art | October 22nd, 2010

The Nikon Inter­na­tion­al Small World Com­pe­ti­tion first began in 1974 as a “means to rec­og­nize and applaud the efforts of those involved with pho­tog­ra­phy through the light micro­scope.” A good 36 years lat­er, Nikon named the win­ners of the 2010 com­pe­ti­tion, which means we can take anoth­er artis­tic look inside the world of small things, get­ting down to the very micro lev­el of ani­mals, plants and min­er­als. Above, you’re look­ing at an image of glial cells in the cere­bel­lum mag­ni­fied 400 times. This image and 28 oth­ers appear in the always excel­lent The Big Pic­ture sec­tion of the Boston Globe. Also vis­it a gallery of images on the Nikon site. Thanks to @wesalwan for send­ing our way.

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OK Go & Kutiman: Live from the Guggenheim

in Art, Music, YouTube | October 21st, 2010

On Thurs­day night, the Guggen­heim Muse­um and YouTube unveiled the win­ners of a high­ly pub­li­cized video con­test, YouTube Play: A Bien­ni­al of Cre­ative Video. The con­test orig­i­nal­ly gen­er­at­ed 23,000 sub­mis­sions from 91 coun­tries, and, from there, Guggen­heim cura­tors culled a short­list of 125 videos. Then the big moment: 20 win­ners were select­ed dur­ing an awards cer­e­mo­ny held last night at the muse­um.

The cer­e­mo­ny itself fea­tured per­for­mances by artists who have made YouTube inte­gral to their art – above we have Kuti­man, the Israeli artist known for his moth­er of all funk remix, giv­ing the audi­ence some­thing rather dif­fer­ent: a live mashup of Brahms’ “Hun­gar­i­an Dance,” accom­pa­nied by the Non­ame ensem­ble from the Jul­liard School and YouTube Sym­pho­ny Orcher­stra play­ers. And to wrap things up OK Go, the unof­fi­cial kings of YouTube, per­formed ‘White Knuck­les’ and ‘This too Shall Pass.’ Keep a close eye on the YouTube chan­nel ded­i­cat­ed to the Bien­ni­al of Cre­ative Video. The win­ning videos will almost cer­tain­ly be com­ing online soon.

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Vintage Literary T‑Shirts

in Books | October 21st, 2010

Out of Print Cloth­ing “cel­e­brates the world’s great sto­ries through fash­ion,” work­ing with artists to design t‑shirts that fea­ture icon­ic book cov­ers. The cat­a­log lets you choose from Orwell’s Ani­mal Farm, Salinger’s Catch­er in the Rye, William S. Bur­roughs’ Naked Lunch, Bul­gakov’s Russ­ian clas­sic Mas­ter and Mar­gari­ta or 29 oth­er vin­tage shirts, each of which costs a fair­ly rea­son­able $28. See the full list of shirts here.

via @AndrewHazlett

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The Dalai Lama on the Neuroscience of Compassion

in Politics, Psychology, Religion, Science | October 21st, 2010

Last week, the Dalai Lama spent sev­er­al days at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty, where he made com­pas­sion his focus. He laid the foun­da­tion with a large pub­lic address before an audi­ence of 7,000. (Watch an excerpt above or the full talk below.) Then things got more focused when the spir­i­tu­al leader of Tibet par­tic­i­pat­ed in a day­long con­fer­ence about the neu­ro­bi­o­log­i­cal under­pin­nings of com­pas­sion. Host­ed by Stan­ford’s Cen­ter for Com­pas­sion and Altru­ism Research and Edu­ca­tion, the con­fer­ence brought togeth­er impor­tant sci­en­tists from many dis­ci­plines – psy­chol­o­gy, neu­ro­science, med­i­cine, and eco­nom­ics. You can watch a record­ing of the con­fer­ence here. It’s all in video and ready to go.

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A Slo-Mo Look Inside North Korea

in Current Affairs | October 20th, 2010

In North Korea, the pro­pa­gan­da machine is kick­ing into gear, lay­ing the foun­da­tion for Kim Jong-un to replace his father Kim Jong-il. Ear­li­er this month, father and son attend­ed a mas­sive mil­i­tary parade togeth­er. Osten­si­bly meant to com­mem­o­rate the 65th anniver­sary of the found­ing of the Work­ers’ Par­ty, the parade was real­ly about giv­ing the son a big com­ing-out par­ty – a first intro­duc­tion to domes­tic and for­eign audi­ences. And depart­ing from the usu­al script, the North Kore­an regime allowed West­ern jour­nal­ists to cov­er the event live and on-site. Hence the video above. Using Canon 60D and 1DmkIV cam­eras, the Guardian bril­liant­ly cap­tured the pro­pa­gan­dis­tic essence of the moment.

Relat­ed note: It has­n’t been updat­ed in a while, but the blog North Kore­an Econ­o­my Watch uses Google Earth to pro­vide the most exten­sive map­ping of North Korea’s eco­nom­ic, cul­tur­al, polit­i­cal, and mil­i­tary infra­struc­tures. It’s a great way to fur­ther demys­ti­fy the secre­tive state. Thanks to Ed for the tip.

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Sir Ken Robinson: A Creative Education

in Creativity, Education | October 19th, 2010

Do schools kill cre­ativ­i­ty? Sir Ken Robin­son asked that ques­tion at the 2006 TED con­fer­ence. And the talk res­onat­ed wide­ly. His short pre­sen­ta­tion remains one of the most watched and “favor­it­ed” videos in TED’s large cat­a­logue of inspir­ing videos. Quite an accom­plish­ment.

Now, with the lat­est RSA video, Sir Ken returns to delve deep­er into this basic ques­tion. He asks, Why do schools kill cre­ativ­i­ty? And why is this prob­lem built into the mod­ern edu­ca­tion­al sys­tem? And how can we bring a “par­a­digm” shift – one that will let schools fos­ter cre­ativ­i­ty at long last?

Run­ning 11 min­utes, the cre­ative­ly-ani­mat­ed video above (how fit­ting!) gives you some answers. But real­ize that the clip is an excerpt from a longer 52 minute lec­ture avail­able in its entire­ty here.

A quick PS: Wired UK recent­ly asked the big ques­tion: “What inno­va­tion would most improve edu­ca­tion in the next decade?” You will find suc­cinct answers by Ken Robin­son, Chris Ander­son (head of TED), yours tru­ly and sev­er­al oth­ers here.

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