The Smithsonian Puts 2.8 Million High-Res Images Online and Into the Public Domain

in Art, Education, History, How to Learn for Free, Libraries, Museums, Photography | February 27th, 2020

No mat­ter how many pub­lic insti­tu­tions you vis­it in a day—schools, libraries, muse­ums, or the dread­ed DMV—you may still feel like pri­va­tized ser­vices are clos­ing in. And if you’re a fan of nation­al parks and pub­lic lands, you’re keen­ly aware they’re at risk of being eat­en up by devel­op­ers and ener­gy com­pa­nies. The com­mons are shrink­ing, a trag­ic fact that is hard­ly inevitable but, as Mat­to Milden­berg­er argues at Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can, the result of some very nar­row ideas.

But we can take heart that one store of com­mon wealth has major­ly expand­ed recent­ly, and will con­tin­ue to grow each year since Jan­u­ary 1, 2019—Pub­lic Domain Day—when hun­dreds of thou­sands of works from 1923 became freely avail­able, the first time that hap­pened in 21 years. This year saw the release of thou­sands more works into the pub­lic domain from 1924, and so it will con­tin­ue ad infini­tum.

And now—as if that weren’t enough to keep us busy learn­ing about, shar­ing, adapt­ing, and repur­pos­ing the past into the future—the Smith­son­ian has released 2.8 mil­lion images into the pub­lic domain, mak­ing them search­able, share­able, and down­load­able through the museum’s Open Access plat­form.

This huge release of “high res­o­lu­tion two- and three-dimen­sion­al images from across its col­lec­tions,” notes Smith­son­ian Mag­a­zine, “is just the begin­ning. Through­out the rest of 2020, the Smith­son­ian will be rolling out anoth­er 200,000 or so images, with more to come as the Insti­tu­tion con­tin­ues to dig­i­tize its col­lec­tion of 155 mil­lion items and count­ing.”

There are those who would say that these images always belonged to the pub­lic as the hold­ings of a pub­licly-fund­ed insti­tu­tion some­times called “the nation’s attic.” It’s a fair point, but shouldn’t take away from the excite­ment of the news. “Smith­son­ian” as a con­ve­nient­ly sin­gu­lar moniker actu­al­ly names “19 muse­ums, nine research cen­ters, libraries, archives, and the Nation­al Zoo,” an enor­mous col­lec­tion of art and his­toric arti­facts.

That’s quite a lot to sift through, but if you don’t know what you’re look­ing for, the site’s high­lights will direct you to one fas­ci­nat­ing image after anoth­er, from Moham­mad Ali’s 1973 head­gear to the his­toric Eliz­a­bethan por­trait of Poc­a­hon­tas, to the col­lec­tion box of the Rhode Island Anti-Slav­ery Soci­ety owned by William Lloyd Garrison’s fam­i­ly, to Walt Whit­man in 1891, as pho­tographed by the painter Thomas Eakins, to just about any­thing else you might imag­ine.

Enter the Smithsonian’s Open Access archive here and browse and search its mil­lions of new­ly-pub­lic domain images, a mas­sive col­lec­tion that may help expand the def­i­n­i­tion of com­mon knowl­edge.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pub­lic Domain Day Is Final­ly Here!: Copy­right­ed Works Have Entered the Pub­lic Domain Today for the First Time in 21 Years

The Library of Con­gress Launch­es the Nation­al Screen­ing Room, Putting Online Hun­dreds of His­toric Films

The Smith­son­ian Design Muse­um Dig­i­tizes 200,000 Objects, Giv­ing You Access to 3,000 Years of Design Inno­va­tion & His­to­ry

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The Seven Road-Tested Habits of Effective Artists

in Art, Computer Science, How to Learn for Free, Life, Philosophy, Software | November 15th, 2019

Fif­teen years ago, a young con­struc­tion work­er named Andrew Price went in search of free 3d soft­ware to help him achieve his goal of ren­der­ing a 3D car.

He stum­bled onto Blender, a just-the-tick­et open source soft­ware that helps users with every aspect of 3D creation—modeling, rig­ging, ani­ma­tion, sim­u­la­tion, ren­der­ing, com­posit­ing, and motion track­ing.

Price describes his ear­ly learn­ing style as “play­ing it by ear,” sam­pling tuto­ri­als, some of which he couldn’t be both­ered to com­plete.

Desire for free­lance gigs led him to forge a new iden­ti­ty, that of a Blender Guru, whose tuto­ri­als, pod­casts, and arti­cles would help oth­er new users get the hang of the soft­ware.

But it wasn’t declar­ing him­self an expert that ulti­mate­ly improved his artis­tic skills. It was hold­ing his own feet over the fire by plac­ing a bet with his younger cousin, who stood to gain $1000 if Price failed to rack up 1,000 “likes” by post­ing 2D draw­ings to Art­Sta­tion with­in a 6‑month peri­od.

(If he succeeded—which he did, 3 days before his self-imposed deadline—his cousin owed him noth­ing. Loss aver­sion proved to be a more pow­er­ful moti­va­tor than any car­rot on a stick…)

In order to snag the req­ui­site likes, Price found that he need­ed to revise some habits and com­mit to a more robust dai­ly prac­tice, a jour­ney he detailed in a pre­sen­ta­tion at the 2016 Blender Con­fer­ence.

Price con­fess­es that the chal­lenge taught him much about draw­ing and paint­ing, but even more about hav­ing an effec­tive artis­tic prac­tice. His sev­en rules apply to any num­ber of cre­ative forms:

 

Andrew Price’s Rules for an Effec­tive Artist Prac­tice:

  1. Prac­tice Dai­ly

A num­ber of pro­lif­ic artists have sub­scribed to this belief over the years, includ­ing nov­el­ist (and moth­er!) JK Rowl­ing, come­di­an Jer­ry Sein­feld, auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal per­former Mike Bir­bli­gia, and mem­oirist David Sedaris.

If you feel too fried to uphold your end of the bar­gain, pre­tend to go easy on your­self with a lit­tle trick Price picked up from music pro­duc­er Rick Rubin: Do the absolute min­i­mum. You’ll like­ly find that per­form­ing the min­i­mum posi­tions you to do much more than that. Your resis­tance is not so much to the doing as it is to the embark­ing.

  1. Quan­ti­ty over Per­fec­tion­ism Mas­querad­ing as Qual­i­ty

This harkens back to Rule Num­ber One. Who are we to say which of our works will be judged wor­thy. Just keep putting it out there—remember it’s all prac­tice, and law of aver­ages favors those whose out­put is, like Picasso’s, prodi­gious. Don’t stand in the way of progress by split­ting a sin­gle work’s end­less hairs.

  1. Steal With­out Rip­ping Off

Immerse your­self in the cre­ative bril­liance of those you admire. Then prof­it off your own improved efforts, a prac­tice advo­cat­ed by the likes of musi­cian David Bowie, com­put­er vision­ary Steve Jobs, and artist/social com­men­ta­tor Banksy.

  1. Edu­cate Your­self

As a stand-alone, that old chest­nut about prac­tice mak­ing per­fect is not suf­fi­cient to the task. Whether you seek out online tuto­ri­als, as Price did, enroll in a class, or des­ig­nate a men­tor, a con­sci­en­tious com­mit­ment to study your craft will help you to bet­ter mas­ter it.

  1. Give your­self a break

Bang­ing your head against the wall is not good for your brain. Price cel­e­brates author Stephen King’s prac­tice of giv­ing the first draft of a new nov­el six weeks to mar­i­nate. Your break may be short­er. Three days may be ample to juice you up cre­ative­ly. Just make sure it’s in your cal­en­dar to get back to it.

  1. Seek Feed­back

Film­mak­er Tai­ka Wait­i­ti, rap­per Kanye West, and the big goril­las at Pixar are not threat­ened by oth­ers’ opin­ions. Seek them out. You may learn some­thing.

  1. Cre­ate What You Want To

Pas­sion projects are the key to cre­ative longevi­ty and plea­sur­able process. Don’t cater to a fick­le pub­lic, or the shift­ing sands of fash­ion. Pur­sue the sorts of things that inter­est you.

Implic­it in Price’s sev­en com­mand­ments is the notion that some­thing may have to budge—your night­ly cock­tails, the num­ber of hours spent on social media, that extra half hour in bed after the alarm goes off… Don’t neglect your famil­ial or civic oblig­a­tions, but nei­ther should you short­change your art. Life’s too short.

Read the tran­script of Andrew Price’s Blender Con­fer­ence pre­sen­ta­tion here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Dai­ly Habits of Famous Writ­ers: Franz Kaf­ka, Haru­ki Muraka­mi, Stephen King & More

The Dai­ly Habits of High­ly Pro­duc­tive Philoso­phers: Niet­zsche, Marx & Immanuel Kant

How to Read Many More Books in a Year: Watch a Short Doc­u­men­tary Fea­tur­ing Some of the World’s Most Beau­ti­ful Book­stores

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Decem­ber 9 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates Dennison’s Christ­mas Book (1921). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Make an Adorable Crocheted Freddie Mercury; Download a Free Crochet Pattern Online

in Creativity, How to Learn for Free, Music | September 23rd, 2019

Giv­en his pas­sion for his pussy­cats, is it real­ly such a stretch to imag­ine Queen front­man Fred­die Mer­cury pass­ing a qui­et evening at home with a cup of tea and a bas­ket of cro­chet sup­plies?

Tis but a handicrafter’s fan­ta­sy.

Oth­er than a boy­ish inter­est in stamp col­lect­ing, Mer­cury claimed to have no hob­bies, famous­ly telling an inter­view­er who inquired, “I have none. I have a lot of sex. Try and get out of that one!”

Which is not to say sex and cro­chet are mutu­al­ly exclu­sive.

If your cro­chet notions are root­ed in frumpy afghans, lumpy baby sweaters, and 1970s beer can hats, you need to get with the times and pic­ture a church bazaar pop­u­lat­ed exclu­sive­ly by sexy woolen Mer­curys in minia­ture fac­sim­i­les of his Wem­b­ley Sta­di­um era garb.

Moji-Moji Design’s Jan­ice Holmes, a self-taught expert in amigu­ru­mi, the art of tiny cro­cheted crea­tures, devised the pat­tern in order to stitch up a spe­cial request for a Queen-lov­ing friend.

The result, com­plete with hairy chest, jack­et buck­les, and a bam­boo skew­er mic stand, was so fab­u­lous that she felt com­pelled to share the pat­tern with the world, in hope that those who took advan­tage of the free down­load would con­sid­er donat­ing to the Mer­cury Phoenix Trust, a char­i­ty that band­mates Bri­an May and Roger Tay­lor and Queen man­ag­er Jim Beach found­ed to fight HIV/AIDS world­wide.

Those who braved the tricky, many-stepped pat­tern were invit­ed to share pho­tos of their final cre­ation on Moji-Moji’s Face­book page. As of last count, there are 21, and it’s fas­ci­nat­ing to note the slight vari­a­tions in eyes, mus­tache, and chest hair.

In keep­ing with amigu­ru­mi tra­di­tion, the afford­able pat­terns in Moji-Moji’s Etsy shop run toward cute ani­mals, cud­dly mon­sters, and sea­son­al favorites like witch­es and elves.

But Fred­die clear­ly stirred some­thing up. Read the com­ments and you’ll find crafters peti­tion­ing Holmes for more music icons like David Bowie and Prince.

Ready to snug­gle up with a cro­chet hook? Down­load Moji-Moji’s free Fred­die Mer­cury ami­garu­mi pat­tern here.

If that’s rather too daunt­ing, ease into the crafti­ness with anoth­er free down­load—Lady Lazy­bones’ far less advanced fold­able cube­craft Fred­die.

Even if you plan on stick­ing with sex as your sole hob­by, please con­sid­er mak­ing a vol­un­tary con­tri­bu­tion to the Mer­cury Phoenix Trust here.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Meet Fred­die Mer­cury and His Faith­ful Feline Friends

Watch Behind-the-Scenes Footage From Fred­die Mercury’s Final Video Per­for­mance

Fred­die Mer­cury Reimag­ined as Com­ic Book Heroes

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Octo­ber 7 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates the art of Aubrey Beard­s­ley. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Movie Accent Expert Analyzes 31 Actors Playing Other Famous People: Jamie Foxx as Ray Charles, Natalie Portman as Jackie Kennedy, Cate Blanchett as Bob Dylan, and More

in English Language, Film, How to Learn for Free, Life | December 7th, 2018

Well-known fig­ures’ voic­es are often as dis­tinc­tive as their thou­sand-watt smiles and influ­en­tial hair­dos.

While there is some evi­dence as to the accents and idio­syn­crat­ic speech pat­terns of such his­tor­i­cal heavy hit­ters as Thomas Edi­son, Flo­rence Nightin­gale, and Har­ry Hou­di­ni, tech­no­log­i­cal improve­ments have real­ly upped the ante for those charged with imper­son­at­ing real life peo­ple from the mid 20th-cen­tu­ry onward.

Natal­ie Port­man had to sus­tain her Jack­ie Kennedy imper­son­ation for an entire fea­ture-length biopic, a per­for­mance dialect coach Erik Singer gives high marks, above. Port­man, he explains, has tru­ly inter­nal­ized Jackie’s idi­olect, the indi­vid­ual quirks that add yet anoth­er lay­er to such sig­ni­fiers as class and region.

As evi­dence, he sub­mits a side-by-side com­par­i­son of the First Lady’s famous 1962 tele­vised tour of the White House ren­o­va­tions she had spear­head­ed, and Portman’s recre­ation there­of.

Port­man has done her home­work with regard to breath pat­tern, pitch, and the refine­ment that strikes most 21st cen­tu­ry ears as a bit stilt­ed and strange. Most impres­sive to Singer is the way Port­man trans­fers Kennedy’s odd­ly musi­cal elon­ga­tion of cer­tain syl­la­bles to oth­er words in the script. Tis no mere par­rot job.

Jamie Foxx’s Oscar-win­ning turn as Ray Charles suc­ceeds on copi­ous research and his abil­i­ty to inhab­it Charles’ habit­u­al smile. Obvi­ous­ly, the pos­ture in which an indi­vid­ual holds their mouth has a lot to do with the sound of their voice, and Foxx was blessed with plen­ty of source mate­r­i­al.

The 1982 epic Gand­hi pro­vid­ed the ver­sa­tile Ben Kings­ley with the oppor­tu­ni­ty to show­case not one, but two, idi­olects. The adult Gand­hi under­went a dra­mat­ic and well doc­u­ment­ed evo­lu­tion from the British accent he adopt­ed as a young law stu­dent in Lon­don to a proud­ly Indi­an voice bet­ter suit­ed to inspir­ing a nation to uni­fy against its British col­o­niz­ers.

It’s like­ly that many of us have nev­er con­sid­ered the speech-relat­ed build­ing blocks Singer scru­ti­nizes while ana­lyz­ing 29 oth­er per­for­mances for the WIRED video, above—epenthesis, tongue posi­tions, rel­a­tive degrees of emphat­ic mus­cu­lar­i­ty, and retroflex consonants—but it’s easy to see how they play a part.

Singer invites you to expand his research and teach­ing library by record­ing your­self speak­ing extem­po­ra­ne­ous­ly and read­ing from two sam­ple texts here. Pray that who­ev­er plays you in the biopic gets it right.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Peter Sell­ers Gives a Quick Demon­stra­tion of British Accents

Why Do Peo­ple Talk Fun­ny in Old Movies?, or The Ori­gin of the Mid-Atlantic Accent

Watch Meryl Streep Have Fun with Accents: Bronx, Pol­ish, Irish, Aus­tralian, Yid­dish & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  See her onstage in New York City through Decem­ber 20th in the 10th anniver­sary pro­duc­tion of Greg Kotis’ apoc­a­lyp­tic hol­i­day tale, The Truth About San­ta, and the book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Art Institute of Chicago Puts 44,000+ Works of Art Online: View Them in High Resolution

in Art, Education, How to Learn for Free, Museums, Technology | October 25th, 2018

After the fire that total­ly destroyed Brazil’s Museu Nacional in Rio, many peo­ple lament­ed that the muse­um had not dig­i­tal­ly backed up its col­lec­tion and point­ed to the event as a trag­ic exam­ple of why such dig­i­ti­za­tion is so nec­es­sary. Just a cou­ple decades ago, stor­ing and dis­play­ing this much infor­ma­tion was impos­si­ble, so it may seem like a strange demand to make. And in any case, two-dimen­sion­al images stored on servers—or even 3D print­ed copies—cannot replace or sub­sti­tute for orig­i­nal, price­less arti­facts or works of art.

But muse­ums around the world that have dig­i­tized most–or all–of their col­lec­tions don’t claim to have repli­cat­ed or replaced the expe­ri­ence of an in-per­son vis­it, or to have ren­dered phys­i­cal media obso­lete.

Dig­i­tal col­lec­tions pro­vide access to mil­lions of peo­ple who can­not, or will not, ever trav­el to the major cities in which fine art resides, and they give mil­lions of schol­ars, teach­ers, and stu­dents resources once avail­able only to a select few.

We can’t all take the day off like Fer­ris Bueller and stand in front of Georges Seurat’s Sun­day After­noon on the Island of La Grande Jat­te. But thanks to the Art Insti­tute of Chica­go, we can all view and down­load the 1884 pointil­list paint­ing in high res­o­lu­tion, zoom in close­ly like the trou­bled Cameron to spe­cif­ic details, share the dig­i­tal image under a Cre­ative Com­mons Zero license, and sim­i­lar­ly inter­act with an oil sketch for the final paint­ing and sev­er­al con­té cray­on stud­ies.

And if that weren’t enough, the muse­um also includes a bib­li­og­ra­phy, exhi­bi­tion his­to­ry, notes on prove­nance, audio and video his­to­ries and descrip­tions, and edu­ca­tion­al resources like teacher man­u­als, les­son plans, and exams. This goes for many of the 44,312—with more to come—digital images online, includ­ing such famous works of art as Vin­cent van Gogh’s 1889 The Bed­room, Grant Wood’s 1930 Amer­i­can Goth­ic, Pablo Picasso’s 1903–4 blue peri­od paint­ing The Old Gui­tarist, Edward Hopper’s 1942 Nighthawks, Mary Cassatt’s 1893 The Child’s Bath, and so many more that it bog­gles the mind.

Browse Impres­sion­ism, Pop Art, works from the African Dias­po­ra, Cityscapes, Fash­ion, Mytho­log­i­cal Works, and oth­er gen­res and cat­e­gories. Search artists, dates, styles, media, depart­ments, places, and more.

A per­son­al vis­it to the Art Insti­tute is an awe-inspir­ing, and some­what over­whelm­ing expe­ri­ence, if you can get the day to go. You can vis­it the web­site, with full unre­strict­ed access, and gath­er infor­ma­tion, study, mar­vel, and casu­al­ly browse, at any time of day—every day if you like. No, it’s not the same, but as a learn­ing expe­ri­ence, in some ways, it’s even bet­ter. And if, by some awful chance, any­thing should hap­pen to this art, we won’t have to rely on user-sub­mit­ted pho­tos to recon­struct the cul­tur­al mem­o­ry.

The launch of this col­lec­tion comes as part of the museum’s web­site redesign, and it is an exten­sive, and expen­sive, endeav­or. The Art Insti­tute, which charges for entry, can afford to make its col­lec­tions free online. Some oth­er muse­ums charge image fees to sup­port their online work. Ide­al­ly, as art his­to­ri­an Ben­dor Grosvenor writes at Art His­to­ry News, muse­ums should offer free and open access to both phys­i­cal and online col­lec­tions, and some insti­tu­tions, like Sweden’s National­mu­se­um, have shown that this is pos­si­ble.

And, as Grosvenor shows, the suc­cess of open access online col­lec­tions has yield­ed anoth­er ben­e­fit, for both view­ers and muse­ums alike. The more peo­ple are exposed to art online, the more like­ly they are to vis­it muse­ums in per­son. Chica­go awaits you. Until then, vir­tu­al­ly immerse your­self in the Art Institute’s many thou­sands of trea­sures here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

25 Mil­lion Images From 14 Art Insti­tu­tions to Be Dig­i­tized & Put Online In One Huge Schol­ar­ly Archive

1.8 Mil­lion Free Works of Art from World-Class Muse­ums: A Meta List of Great Art Avail­able Online

Wikipedia Leads Effort to Cre­ate a Dig­i­tal Archive of 20 Mil­lion Arti­facts Lost in the Brazil­ian Muse­um Fire

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Watch 13 Comedians Take “The Bob Ross Challenge” & Help Raise Money for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society

in Art, Comedy, How to Learn for Free, Television | August 13th, 2018

The late Bob Ross, the almost laugh­ably calm host of PBS’ pop­u­lar how-to series, the Joy of Paint­ing, was a boss of many things—business, brand­ing, the 16th-cen­tu­ry wet-on-wet ”Alla Pri­ma” tech­nique…

Also speed, as thir­teen New York City come­di­ans recent­ly dis­cov­ered first­hand.

Invit­ed to par­tic­i­pate in The Bob Ross Chal­lenge, a web series-cum-fundrais­er hatched by come­di­ans Mic­ah Sher­man and Mark Stet­son, they game­ly plunged ahead, regard­less of artis­tic tal­ent or famil­iar­i­ty with the mas­ter.

Some like, Julia Duffy, are sim­ply too young to have encoun­tered Ross in his pub­lic tele­vi­sion hey­day.

(For the record, all 403 episodes of Ross’ paint­ing show are now view­able online for free.)

Oth­ers, like Aparna Nancher­la, above, chanced upon reruns screened for iron­ic effect in dive bars…

Or, like Keisha Zol­lar, they’re in a roman­tic rela­tion­ship with some­one who uses The Joy of Paint­ing to com­bat insom­nia.

The major­i­ty seem to share a latch key kid’s fond­ness for the gen­tle Ross, whose show proved a chill pair­ing with after­school snacks.

“We spent about $1000 on offi­cial Bob Ross sup­plies,” She­man reports. From easel to the fan brush, every­thing was set up for the par­tic­i­pat­ing come­di­ans’ suc­cess. Like Ross, who typ­i­cal­ly shot a sea­son’s worth of episodes over a sin­gle week­end, the first sea­son’s shoot tran­spired over a few days.

The ground rules were sim­ple. Armed with an arse­nal of offi­cial­ly sanc­tioned sup­plies, each come­di­an entered a stu­dio where a Joy of Paint­ing episode was screen­ing, charged with recre­at­ing that can­vas in real time. At the end of the episode, it was “brush­es down” whether or not the can­vas bore pass­ing resem­blance to Bob’s.

“Our orig­i­nal title was Bob Ross Fails, but peo­ple were actu­al­ly suc­ceed­ing,” Sher­man con­fess­es.

That said, there’s a def­i­nite edge. The par­tic­i­pants may be trained in improv, but as per­form­ers, there’s an imper­a­tive to get over, and, as stat­ed, Ross moves fast. In the time it takes an aver­age mor­tal to apply a sky wash, he’s like­ly fan brushed in a cou­ple of hap­py lit­tle trees.

Tough nuts.

The rules of the game decree that the stop­watch abides.

As Ralf Jean-Pierre observes, it’s a race against time.

Though not every­one plays by the rules…

David Carl, above, cre­ator of Trump Lear, declares (in char­ac­ter) that he not only defeat­ed Bob Ross, but that “no one’s ever had a bet­ter tree than that” and that his clouds are “beau­ti­ful­ly tremen­dous.”

Sher­man and his co-cre­ator Mark Stet­son have con­ceived of The Bob Ross Chal­lenge as a fundrais­er for the Leukemia & Lym­phoma Soci­ety. Like Ross, Stetson’s father was pre­ma­ture­ly claimed by lym­phoma. Make a dona­tion in their hon­or here.

Watch the first sea­son of The Bob Ross Chal­lenge here.

#BobRossIs­A­Boss

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Every Episode of Bob Ross’ The Joy Of Paint­ing Free Online: 403 Episodes Span­ning 31 Sea­sons

Arti­fi­cial Neur­al Net­work Reveals What It Would Look Like to Watch Bob Ross’ The Joy of Paint­ing on LSD

Chris Rock Cre­ates a List of His 13 Favorite Standup Com­e­dy Spe­cials

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Her recent trip to Mex­i­co City is the inspi­ra­tion for her lat­est short play at The Tank in New York City on August 23, Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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How to Paint Like Kandinsky, Picasso, Warhol & More: A Video Series from the Tate

in Art, How to Learn for Free, Museums | July 20th, 2018

Learn How to Print like Warhol… in five min­utes?

That sounds like fun! My Saturday’s pret­ty open…

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, The Tate’s How To series is a bit of a mis­nomer. This is not the any­one-can-do-it approach of PBS leg­end Bob Ross and his Hap­py Lit­tle Trees…

Yes, the short video demon­stra­tions come with sup­ply lists and step-by-step instruc­tions, but with­out an exist­ing fine arts back­ground, you may feel more than a lit­tle bit daunt­ed, pin­ing for the sort of kid-friend­ly mod­i­fi­ca­tions that help sec­ond graders mim­ic famous artists with such aplomb.

Rather than rel­e­gate your fresh­ly-pur­chased screens, roll of acetate, and econ­o­my-sized con­tain­er of pho­to-emul­sion to the same clos­et where your cross coun­try skis, for­eign lan­guage cas­settes, and beer-mak­ing kit are cur­rent­ly spend­ing eter­ni­ty, we sug­gest that you not buy them at all.

Instead, appre­ci­ate the way these videos bridge “the gap between Art His­to­ry and Art Cre­ation,” in the words of one view­er.

So THAT’S how Warhol and untold thou­sands of oth­er artists, includ­ing this segment’s guide Mar­i­anne Keat­ing, make their prints! A lot of equip­ment! A lot of pre­cise steps. Maybe some day you’ll take a stab at it.

’Til then… Keat­ing picked for­mer Jamaican Prime Min­is­ter Michael Man­ley as her sub­ject. Who would you choose?

Artist Sui Kim’s seg­ment on Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky’s approach to paint­ing inspires a semi-abstract scene from her South Kore­an child­hood, using the same col­or palette as Kandinsky’s Cos­sacks.

What would you paint?

Though before blithe­ly slap­ping a sec­ond-grad­er rain­bow on your vision and assum­ing you now know how to paint like Kandin­sky (whether or not you know how to paint), check out the Tate’s descrip­tion of the orig­i­nal:

Paint­ed between 1910 and 1911, Cos­sacks is an expres­sion of Kandinsky’s belief in the pow­er of art “to awak­en this capac­i­ty for expe­ri­enc­ing the spir­i­tu­al in mate­r­i­al and in abstract phe­nom­e­na.” The dynam­ic ten­sion between abstract form and con­crete con­tent may be read as a man­i­fes­ta­tion of the wider con­flict between the forces of polit­i­cal oppres­sion – Kandin­sky had been deeply moved by the strikes and upheavals in Odessa a few years ear­li­er – and the hunger for spir­i­tu­al reju­ve­na­tion con­se­quent upon the rise of soul­less moder­ni­ty. Like his con­tem­po­raries Piet Mon­dri­an and Hen­ri Matisse, Kandin­sky saw paint­ing as an exten­sion of reli­gion, capa­ble, as he wrote in his Rem­i­nis­cences (1913), of reveal­ing ‘new per­spec­tives and true truths’ in ‘moments of sud­den illu­mi­na­tion, resem­bling a flash of light­ning.’ The echo of the Ancient Greek writer Longinus’s notion of sub­lime speech, which sim­i­lar­ly strikes like a bolt of light­ning, is car­ried over into Kandinsky’s descrip­tion of the spir­i­tu­al mis­sion of the mod­ern artist. In his 1911 essay On the Spir­i­tu­al in Art, he com­pares the life of the spir­it to ‘a large, acute-angled tri­an­gle,’ at the apex of which stands the soli­tary artis­tic genius dis­pens­ing spir­i­tu­al food to the mul­ti­tudes below.

Pret­ty com­plex stuff!

Per­haps Picas­so is a more straight­for­ward propo­si­tion.

Reck­on you could rope a friend into mod­el­ing for a Cubist por­trait a la Bust of a Woman (1909)? If so, which friend, and what might you do for them in return?

Oth­er artists in the Tate’s How To series include J.M.W. Turn­er and sculp­tor Rachel Whiteread. Watch them all here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Every Episode of Bob Ross’ The Joy Of Paint­ing Free Online: 403 Episodes Span­ning 31 Sea­sons

The MoMA Teach­es You How to Paint Like Pol­lock, Rothko, de Koon­ing & Oth­er Abstract Painters

What Makes The Death of Socrates a Great Work of Art?: A Thought-Pro­vok­ing Read­ing of David’s Philo­soph­i­cal & Polit­i­cal Paint­ing

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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David Lynch Teaches Typing: A New Interactive Comedy Game

in Comedy, Computer Science, Film, Games, How to Learn for Free, Technology, Television | March 2nd, 2018

Typ­ing pro­grams demand some patience on the part of the stu­dent, and David Lynch Teach­es Typ­ing is no excep­tion.

You’ve got 90 sec­onds to get accli­mat­ed to the crud­dy flop­py disc-era graph­ics and the cacoph­o­nous voice of your instruc­tor, a dead ringer for FBI Deputy Direc­tor Gor­don Cole, the hard-of-hear­ing char­ac­ter direc­tor David Lynch played on his sem­i­nal ear­ly 90s series, Twin Peaks.

Things perk up about a minute and a half in, when stu­dents are instruct­ed to place their left ring fin­gers in an undu­lat­ing bug to the left of their key­boards.

That sec­ond “in”? Not a typo (though you’ll notice plen­ty of no doubt inten­tion­al boo-boos in the teacher’s pre-pro­grammed respons­es…)

The bug in ques­tion may well put you in mind of the mys­te­ri­ous baby in Lynch’s first fea­ture length film, 1977’s Eraser­head.

On the oth­er hand, it might not.

David Lynch Teach­es Typ­ing is actu­al­ly a short inter­ac­tive com­e­dy game, and many of the mil­len­ni­al review­ers cov­er­ing that beat have had to play catch-up in order to catch the many nods to the director’s work con­tained there­in.

One of our favorites is the Apple-esque name of the program’s retro com­put­er, and we’ll wager that fre­quent Lynch col­lab­o­ra­tor, actor Kyle MacLach­lan, would agree.

Anoth­er ref­er­ence that has thus far elud­ed online gam­ing enthu­si­asts in their 20s is Mavis Bea­con Teach­es Typ­ing. Take a peek below at what the vir­tu­al typ­ing tutor’s graph­ics looked like around the time the orig­i­nal Twin Peaks aired to dis­cov­er the cre­ators of David Lynch Teach­es Typ­ing’s oth­er inspi­ra­tion.

David Lynch Teach­es Typ­ing is avail­able for free down­load here. If you’re anx­ious that doing so might open you up to a tech­ni­cal bug of night­mar­ish pro­por­tions, stick with watch­ing the play through at the top of the page.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Big Lebows­ki Reimag­ined as a Clas­sic 8‑Bit Video Game

What Makes a David Lynch Film Lynchi­an: A Video Essay

“The Art of David Lynch”— How Rene Magritte, Edward Hop­per & Fran­cis Bacon Influ­enced David Lynch’s Cin­e­mat­ic Vision

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her March 20 in New York City for the sec­ond edi­tion of Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain, a low bud­get vari­ety show born of a 1920 man­u­al for Girl Scout Camp Direc­tors. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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