The “Collapse” of the Sydney Opera House Sails

in Art, Media | June 4th, 2012

Mul­ti-award win­ning Ger­man design col­lec­tive URBANSCREEN spe­cial­izes in large-scale pro­jec­tion on urban sur­faces. Their first great inter­na­tion­al suc­cess was “555 KUBIK — How it would be if a house was dream­ing,” a bril­liant media instal­la­tion using the façade of the Kun­sthalle Ham­burg. This project quick­ly found its way to all major blogs and sites on the Inter­net and gained so much fame that it sur­passed the pop­u­lar­i­ty of lol­cat videos for almost an hour.

This year, URBANSCREEN was com­mis­sioned to trans­form the sails of the icon­ic Syd­ney Opera House as part of Vivid Syd­ney, a fes­ti­val of light, music and ideas. The tru­ly amaz­ing pro­jec­tions explore the sculp­tur­al form of the Opera House and its place as a home for music, dance and dra­ma. The con­clu­sion is not to be missed.

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

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The Anatomical Drawings of Renaissance Man, Leonardo da Vinci

in Art, History, Science | May 3rd, 2012

Leonar­do da Vin­ci, the arche­type of the Renais­sance Man, received some for­mal train­ing in the anato­my of the human body. He reg­u­lar­ly dis­sect­ed human corpses and made very detailed draw­ings of mus­cles, ten­dons, the heart and vas­cu­lar sys­tem, inter­nal organs and the human skele­ton. A great num­ber of these draw­ings can now be seen in the largest exhi­bi­tion of Leonar­do da Vinci’s stud­ies of the human body, “Leonar­do da Vin­ci: Anatomist,” at The Queen’s Gallery in Buck­ing­ham Palace, Lon­don. In this video, Senior Cura­tor Mar­tin Clay­ton explores three of these draw­ings and shows that Leonar­do’s med­ical dis­cov­er­ies could have trans­formed the study of anato­my in Europe, had they not lan­guished unpub­lished for cen­turies. Clay­ton has also pub­lished his find­ings in “Nature”. And the BBC has looked into the ques­tion of just how accu­rate Leonar­do’s anatom­i­cal draw­ings real­ly were.

Bonus links:

  • The Guardian has a fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ry about Leonar­do da Vin­ci’s note­book, includ­ing his ‘to-do’ list.
  • Here’s a won­der­ful 360° panoram­ic view of San­ta Maria delle Grazia in Milan with Leonar­do’s “Last Sup­per”.

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

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Name That Painting!

in Art, History, Music | July 14th, 2011

In Feb­ru­ary 2010, the Paris-based band Hold Your Hors­es! released a music video to go with their song “70 Mil­lion,” which became an imme­di­ate suc­cess. In the video, the band mem­bers recre­at­ed famous paint­ings, tak­ing the view­er on an enter­tain­ing tour through art his­to­ry. Try to iden­ti­fy as many paint­ings as pos­si­ble, then com­pare your results with the list of the actu­al paint­ings below the jump. Enjoy — and let us know your scores! And, of course, Hap­py Bastille Day.

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Passages from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake: The Film

in Film, Literature | March 28th, 2011

Due to its styl­is­tic and lin­guis­tic com­plex­i­ty, James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake ranks among the most dif­fi­cult works of fic­tion. And that is why vir­tu­al­ly no film­mak­er has ever tried to adapt Joyce’s final work for the screen. But after Mary Man­ning Howe adapt­ed pas­sages from the book for the stage (lis­ten to her read­ing from Finnegans Wake here), Amer­i­can ani­ma­tor Mary Ellen Bute accept­ed the chal­lenge and turned Man­ning’s play into a film.

Sad­ly, Mary Ellen Bute’s short films are almost for­got­ten today, but from the 1930s to 1950s her abstract musi­cal shorts were known to a wide audi­ence. Don’t miss her first col­or film from 1938.

Between 1965 and 1967, Bute cre­at­ed her last film, and only fea­ture film, Pas­sages from Finnegans Wake. The movie was screened at the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val and named Best Debut of the Year (1965). The video above shows only the open­ing sequence, but the whole film can be enjoyed online cour­tesy of UbuWeb.

Bonus: You can read Roger Ebert’s 1968 review of Bute’s film here. He admits that he did­n’t enjoy it too much, but con­cedes this may have been because he had­n’t actu­al­ly read the book.

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

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Teens Ponder Meaning of Contemporary Art

in Art, Video - Arts & Culture | March 14th, 2011

In 2009, Tate Liv­er­pool dis­played four works of con­tem­po­rary art in dif­fer­ent loca­tions around the city. Acclaimed film direc­tor Mike Fig­gis was asked to turn the reac­tions of Liv­er­poodlians to these sculp­tures into short films. The video above shows teenagers dis­cussing Jeff Koon­s’s “Three Ball Total Equi­lib­ri­um Tank.” Anoth­er short film cap­tures the views of stu­dents when one of Dan Flav­in’s instal­la­tions called “Unti­tled” was dis­played at their school for one day.

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

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DalíLinguistics

in Art, English Language | March 9th, 2011

In this hilar­i­ous con­ver­sa­tion, orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in the short-lived ECHO Mag­a­zine in 1960, Sal­vador Dalí tries to teach Irish-born actor Edward Mul­hare how to artic­u­late Eng­lish words in a more Dalían way. When this clip was record­ed, Mul­hare had already spent three years play­ing the role of Pro­fes­sor Hig­gins in the Broad­way ver­sion of My Fair Lady. And as you’ll recall, it was Hig­gins’ job to teach Eliza Doolit­tle, a Cock­ney flower girl, to speak as a prop­er Eng­lish lady. How suc­cess­ful­ly does Dali man­age to put some sur­re­al­ist cool into this rather con­ser­v­a­tive Eng­lish­man? You can lis­ten here to find out. And don’t for­get to catch Sal­vador Dalí’s clas­sic appear­ance on What’s my line?

MP3 via UbuWeb Sound.

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

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