The Machine: Top Prize Winner at the Robot Film Festival

in Film, Science | July 20th, 2011

 

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/6974132[/vimeo]

Rob Shaw’s dark ani­mat­ed short The Machine was vot­ed Best Film at last week’s Robot Film Fes­ti­val in New York City.  The movie starts on what looks like a stan­dard boy-makes-machine, machine-runs-amok, boy-kills-machine tra­jec­to­ry, but veers nice­ly off-course and ends on a note much more Sartre than Ter­mi­na­tor. (Bat­tlestar Galac­ti­ca fans will see the twist com­ing from a mile away).

The Machine seems like a good fit for the new fes­ti­val, which founder and Carnegie Mel­lon roboti­cist Heather Knight hopes will fuel inno­va­tion and help improve robots’ image in a post-Cylon world. For more back­sto­ry, check out edi­tor and RFF judge Celeste Biev­er’s fas­ci­nat­ing wrap-up at the New Sci­en­tist.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Blinky™: A Touch­ing Short Film About A Killer Robot

Robot Con­ducts The Detroit Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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Metropolis II: Chris Burden’s Amazing, Frenetic Mini-City

in Animation, Science, Technology | July 20th, 2011

In his 2007 New York­er essay on per­for­mance artist Chris Bur­den, the crit­ic Peter Schjel­dahl wrote that most of Bur­den’s oeu­vre con­sist­ed of “pow­er­ful works that deal inge­nious­ly with aes­thet­ics and ethics of pow­er.”

Schjeld­hal added that “you needn’t like them to be impressed,” and then described some of Bur­den’s more infa­mous pieces:

He spent five days in a small lock­er, with a bot­tle of water above and a bot­tle for urine below; slith­ered, near­ly naked and with his hands held behind him, across fifty feet of bro­ken glass in a park­ing lot; had his hands nailed to the roof of a Volk­swa­gen; was kicked down a flight of stairs; and, on dif­fer­ent occa­sions, incurred appar­ent risks of burn­ing, drown­ing, and elec­tro­cu­tion.

Bur­den’s more recent “Metrop­o­lis II,” which might seem tame by com­par­i­son, fea­tures over 1,100 mini­cars careen­ing through a maze of inter­con­nect­ed free­ways. It’s still pret­ty chal­leng­ing, even in dilut­ed video form:  The noise and con­stant motion seem cal­cu­lat­ed to wreck your nerves, and accord­ing to this brief seg­ment on the piece, at least one car spins off the tracks every hour. The city may be sur­re­al, but the stress feels as famil­iar as your last bad rush hour.

You can find a fas­ci­nat­ing on-stage inter­view with the artist in LAC­MA’s Direc­tor’s Series, as well as a wealth of infor­ma­tion about Bur­den’s life and work on the muse­um’s web­site.

H/T Fast­CoDe­sign

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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Kurt Russell Auditions for Star Wars

in Film | July 19th, 2011

Talk about dodg­ing cin­e­mat­ic bul­lets. Imag­ine The God­fa­ther with­out Mar­lon Bran­do. It almost hap­pened. And then Star Wars with Kurt Rus­sell (play­ing Han Solo). It was a real enough pos­si­bil­i­ty, and here’s the audi­tion tape as proof…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Star Wars as Silent Film

Star Wars the Musi­cal: The Force is Strong in this One

Darth Vader’s Theme in the Style of Beethoven

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Kutiman Mashes Led Zep’s Black Dog: 80 Clips Stitched into One

in Music | July 19th, 2011

The Israeli mashup artist known as Kuti­man gave us Thru Jer­susalem last month, a con­tem­pla­tive jour­ney through Jerusalem’s eclec­tic, local music scene. Now he returns to his Moth­er of All Funk Chords roots and goes uptem­po again, stitch­ing togeth­er 80 cov­ers of Led Zep­pelin’s 1974 clas­sic, “Black Dog” (orig­i­nal here). Per­haps more than any oth­er I’ve seen, this video gives mean­ing to the expres­sion “the total is greater than the sum of the parts.” The indi­vid­ual cov­ers hard­ly stand out, but the mashup deliv­ers the goods.

via Wired

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Jack Kerouac Plays Pool, 1967

in Literature, Video - Arts & Culture | July 19th, 2011

Kudos to How to be A Retro­naut for find­ing this great clip of Jack Ker­ouac play­ing pool in ear­ly 1967. We bet he was the coolest play­er in that par­tic­u­lar room (at the Paw­tuck­etville Social Club, in Low­ell, Mass). But we’d also bet that he copied that cool, taut per­sona from Paul New­man’s turn as “Fast Eddie” Fel­son in the clas­sic movie The Hus­tler filmed six years ear­li­er.

For more great moments in Beat his­to­ry, check out Ker­ouac and Gore Vidal meet­ing William F. Buck­ley, Alan Gins­berg’s Tug­boat Ride and William S. Bur­roughs Shoot­ing Shake­speare, all oth­er­wise found in our col­lec­tion of 275 Cul­tur­al Icons.

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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Orson Welles Narrates an Animation of Plato’s Cave Allegory

in Philosophy | July 19th, 2011

In 1973, Orson Welles nar­rat­ed this ani­mat­ed short, which fea­tures some­what sur­re­al art­work by Dick Oden. You can see more of Oden’s work here.

The Alle­go­ry of the Cave illus­trates Pla­to’s view of knowl­edge as pre­sent­ed in Book VII of The Repub­lic: in ordi­nary expe­ri­ence, we see only shad­ows of the true world, which we can only behold by pur­su­ing rig­or­ous philo­soph­i­cal analy­sis.

This is not the only time “The Cave” has been set to film in some form. Open Cul­ture read­ers may recall this bril­liant ver­sion done with clay­ma­tion. Glut­tons for pun­ish­ment may wish to peruse this col­lec­tion of 20 YouTube ver­sions at PartiallyExaminedLife.com, many of them fright­ful­ly ama­teur­ish and some of them pre­sent­ing a warped and/or incom­pre­hen­si­ble ver­sion of the sto­ry.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free­dom Riv­er: A Para­ble Told by Orson Welles

Orson Welles Reads Moby Dick

Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

Mark Lin­sen­may­er runs the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life phi­los­o­phy pod­cast and blog, which recent­ly released an episode dis­cussing Pla­to’s Repub­lic.

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Classic Jazz Album Covers Animated & Brought to Life

in Art, Music | July 18th, 2011

Back in 2009, Blue Note Records, the influ­en­tial jazz label, was cel­e­brat­ing its 70th anniver­sary. And The Bel­la Vista Social Pub, look­ing to pro­mote its own sum­mer jazz con­certs in Siena, Tus­cany, came up with a smart idea. Why not pay trib­ute to Blue Note (and pro­mote the Ital­ian con­cert series) by ani­mat­ing the cool cov­er designs that graced Blue Note albums dur­ing its hey­day. These cov­er designs were the work of Reid Miles, a graph­ic design­er who moved from Esquire mag­a­zine to Blue Note around 1955, then designed hun­dreds of aura-cre­at­ing cov­ers until he left the label in 1967. The ani­mat­ed video above, called Hi-Fi, brings Miles’ work back to life. Graph­i­col­o­gy has more on the nos­tal­gia-induc­ing clip here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

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Revisit Havana, the “Paris of the Caribbean,” in the 1930s

in Film, History | July 18th, 2011

This short film show­ing Havana in the 1930s was shot by André de la Varre, the long-time cam­era­man and cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er for Amer­i­can trav­el­er, pho­tog­ra­ph­er and film­mak­er Bur­ton Holmes. In those days, Havana was a flour­ish­ing and fash­ion­able city dubbed the “Paris of the Caribbean,” attract­ing an ever increas­ing num­ber of tourists. André de la Var­re’s film por­trays Havana as the “exot­ic cap­i­tal of appeal,” which pret­ty much sums up its essence dur­ing those days.

Bonus mate­r­i­al: A list of all the sights shown in this film can be found here; anoth­er short film about Havana in the 1950s here. This video from late 2008 gives an idea of the sor­ry state of Havana’s city cen­ter today. And don’t foget to mar­vel at the won­der­ful col­lec­tion of vin­tage trav­el films at The Trav­el Film Archive.

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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