gluon.symmetry

Laurie Anderson - Born, Never Asked (Bogdan edit)

2011-07-13T16:42:00.000+03:00

LAURIE ANDERSON - Born, Never Asked (BOGDAN edit) from kohnkepik on Vimeo.

for R.

2011-03-08T10:39:00.003+02:00

Quantum teleportation

2011-01-23T22:33:00.006+02:00

Quantum teleportation, or entanglement-assisted teleportation, is a technique used to transfer quantum information from one quantum system to another. Its distinguishing feature is that it can transmit the information present in a quantum superposition, useful for quantum communication and computation.
Stated more precisely, quantum teleportation is a quantum protocol by which a qubit a (the basic unit of quantum information) can be transmitted exactly (in principle) from one location to another. The prerequisites are a conventional communication channel capable of transmitting two classical bits (i.e. one of four states), and an entangled Bell pair (b,c) of qubits, with b at the origin and c at the destination.

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monday

2010-06-28T12:09:00.002+03:00

Examined Life

2010-03-30T00:17:00.002+03:00

In Examined Life, filmmaker Astra Taylor accompanies some of today’s most influential thinkers on a series of unique excursions through places and spaces that hold particular resonance for them and their ideas.

Peter Singer’s thoughts on the ethics of consumption are amplified against the backdrop of Fifth Avenue’s posh boutiques. Slavoj Zizek questions current beliefs about the environment while sifting through a garbage dump. Michael Hardt ponders the nature of revolution while surrounded by symbols of wealth and leisure. Judith Butler and a friend stroll through San Francisco’s Mission District questioning our culture’s fixation on individualism. And while driving through Manhattan, Cornel West—perhaps America’s best-known public intellectual—compares philosophy to jazz and blues, reminding us how intense and invigorating a life of the mind can be. Offering privileged moments with great thinkers from fields ranging from moral philosophy to cultural theory, Examined Life reveals philosophy’s power to transform the way we see the world around us and imagine our place in it.

>> TRAILER
>> Google Video

The Smell of Burning Ants

2010-03-29T23:57:00.002+03:00

The Smell of Burning Ants is a haunting documentary on the pains of growing up male. It explores the inner and outer cruelties that boys perpetrate and endure. The film provokes the viewer to reflect on how our society can deprive boys of wholeness.

Through formative events of a boy’s life, we come to understand the ways in which men can become emotionally disconnected and alienated from their feminine side. The common dismissal that “boys will be boys” evolves into the chilling realization that boys frequently become angry, destructive and emotionally disabled men. The Smell of Burning Ants illustrates how boys are socialized by fear, power and shame. The film is a catalyst for discussion and an opportunity to begin the process of healing the wounds of childhood.

>> WATCH

Philip Glass - Etoile Polaire (Bogdan edit)

2010-03-22T11:28:00.002+02:00

Buzz.RO! Compilation 2010

2010-03-16T13:40:00.002+02:00

The first compilation released under Creative Commons in Romania.

>> More info

Burroughs The Movie

2010-02-15T10:22:00.002+02:00

Featuring - Allen Ginsberg, Brion Gysin, Francis Bacon, Jackie Curtis, John Giorno, Lauren Hutton, Patti Smith, Terry Southern, William S. Burroughs
Directed By - Howard Brookner
Photography - Kate Simon, Kevin Gordon
Producer - Alan Yentob, Howard Brookner

>> WATCH

Pierre Bourdieu

2010-01-08T16:40:00.003+02:00

Pierre Bourdieu was an acclaimed French sociologist. Bourdieu pioneered investigative frameworks and terminologies such as cultural, social, and symbolic capital, and the concepts of habitus, field or location, and symbolic violence to reveal the dynamics of power relations in social life. His work emphasized the role of practice and embodiment or forms in social dynamics and worldview construction, often in opposition to universalized Western philosophical traditions.

In its obituary, The Guardian newspaper in the United Kingdom said Bourdieu "was, for many, the leading intellectual of present-day France... a thinker in the same rank as Foucault, Barthes and Lacan". His works have been translated into two dozen languages and have had an impact on the whole gamut of disciplines in the social sciences and the humanities. Several works of his are considered classics, not only in sociology, but also in anthropology, education, and cultural studies.

In France, Bourdieu was not seen as an ivory tower academic or cloistered don, but as a passionate activist for those he believed subordinated by society. Again, from The Guardian: "[In 2003] a documentary film about Pierre Bourdieu — Sociology is a Martial Art — became an unexpected hit in Paris. Its very title stressed how much of a politically engaged intellectual Bourdieu was, taking on the mantle of Emile Zola and Jean-Paul Sartre in French public life, and slugging it out with politicians because he thought that was what people like him should do."

>> more info

Baader-Meinhof

2010-01-07T14:58:00.001+02:00

The Red Army Faction (German: Rote Armee Fraktion), shortened to RAF and in its early stages commonly known as Baader-Meinhof Group, was one of post World War II Germany's most violent and prominent left wing groups. The RAF described itself as a communist and anti-imperialist "urban guerrilla" group engaged in armed resistance against what they deemed to be a fascist state. The RAF was founded in 1970 by Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, Horst Mahler, and Ulrike Meinhof.

>> more info

>> watch the documentary

Richard Dawkins and The Selfish Gene

2009-12-15T11:36:00.003+02:00

Clinton Richard Dawkins is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and popular science writer. Dawkins first came to prominence with his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, which popularised the gene-centered view of evolution and introduced the term meme, helping found the field of memetics. In 1982, he made a widely cited contribution to the science of evolution with the theory, presented in his book The Extended Phenotype, that phenotypic effects are not limited to an organism's body but can stretch far into the environment, including into the bodies of other organisms.

>> more info

The Alchemists of Sound

2009-12-13T22:32:00.001+02:00

The BBC's Radiophonic Workshop was set up in 1958, born out of a desire to create 'new kinds of sounds'. Alchemists of Sound looks at this creative group from its inception, through its golden age when it was supplying music and effects for cult classics like Doctor Who, Blake's Seven and Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, and charts its fading away in 1995 when, due to budget cuts, it was no longer able to survive.

There are interviews with composers from the Workshop, as well as musicians and writers who have been inspired by the output. Great archive footage of the Workshop and its machinery is accompanied by excerpts of the, now cult, TV programmes that featured these sounds.

>> WATCH

Sarah Morris - Capital

2009-12-07T11:38:00.003+02:00

Capital continues Morris's investigation of the way we decode and therefore begin to understand the built world around us. She is interested in our intuitive relationship to architectural statements.

In Capital, an intangible craving for power and money, mingled with a hint of widespread paranoia exemplified by the political process, becomes a metaphor for the architecture that structures our daily lives.

Sarah Morris's film, was shot on location in Washington, D.C. on September 11 - 14, 2000. It shows fast-paced sequences of political icons: the Mall, the White House Press Office, the World Bank, uniformed members of the Secret Service, the Presidential motorcade, the Watergate Complex, the Kennedy Center, the Department of Energy, the J. Edgar Hoover Building, among many others.

>> download

meanwhile

2009-11-11T20:46:00.002+02:00

Mamers Valles, Mars

2009-11-05T15:03:00.003+02:00

Glacial and fluvial landforms that date to ancient Noachian and Hesperian times indicate an abundance of liquid water on Mars at that time. Of interest is evidence of younger (i.e., Amazonian) glacial activities. These processes have recently been suggested for some locations in the Marmers Valles region of Mars.

Marmers Valles tracks about 1000 km along the dichotomy boundary on Mars, near the Deuteronilus Mensae region. This region is characterized by "fretted terrain", a term used for a surface having a stippled and pitted texture. This surface texture is proposed to have resulted from the partial removal of formerly smooth and thin deposits by deflation and sublimation

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Zimoun: Sound Sculptures & Installations

2009-11-02T11:27:00.002+02:00

more info at http://www.zimoun.ch/

Man on Wire

2009-10-28T11:08:00.003+02:00

James Marsh's dazzling, invigorating documentary MAN ON WIRE tells the story of a truly inspiring figure.

In the early 1970s, a fiery young Frenchman named Philippe Petit wanted to shake up the world. When he saw the World Trade Center being built in New York City, he found his mission. Petit was a trained high wire walker, and his goal was to set up a wire between the two towers and give the world a show it could never have expected. As is often the case with these endeavors, the actual high-wire walking was the easiest part of the plan. For nearly seven years, Petit worked on the project, recruiting associates who supported him every step of the way. Finally, after eight months in New York, the day came when Petit and his cronies jumped into action. This wasn't easy. They had to find a way to sneak past security and make their way to the top of the towers with heavy equipment, at which point they had to battle the elements to install the wire. After many close scares, the time came for Petit to realize his dream--and the rest, as they say, is history. Marsh crafts MAN ON WIRE like a heist film, presenting rare and fascinating footage of the actual event alongside flawless reenactments and modern-day interviews with the participants. The result is an immersive, emotionally gratifying motion picture, made all the more stimulating by Michael Nyman's electrifying score.

>> WATCH

The Cause of Imagination

2009-10-18T20:28:00.001+03:00

If you've ever wondered what the inside of the Spaceship on Monta Vista Blvd. looks like, this is your chance to find out. Architect Bart Prince takes you on a tour of his home and studio, and discusses the intentions behind some of his most innovative and ambitious works. This is a fascinating look at a little of the private life of the highly regarded and internationally known architect who makes his home in New Mexico. Orginally broadcast on New Mexico PBS station KNME.

Exile in Buyukada

2009-10-18T20:20:00.001+03:00

In the eleven years following his expulsion from the Soviet Union, Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) exposed the crimes of Joseph Stalin through his writings, tried to organize a worldwide current of opposition to capitalism and Stalinism alike, and lived with the dark foreboding of his own eventual demise at Stalin's machination. Exile in Buyukada is a plausible cinematic evocation of Trotsky's time of persecution and frustration. A hybrid of documentary and drama based on Isaac Deutscher's celebrated biography, The Prophet Outcast (1963), and narrated enchantingly by English actress Vanessa Redgrave, the film depicts Trotsky in his Turkish exile.

This is how we walk the moon

2009-10-02T22:58:00.002+03:00

Johanna Billing vs Arthur Russell - This is how we walk on the moon (Bogdan edit)

Toshimaru Nakamura

2009-09-29T10:42:00.003+03:00

Various Tracks from Improvised Music from Japan

No-input mixing board player

Toshimaru Nakamura has been producing electronic music on self-named "no-input mixing board," after long unhappy years with the electric guitar. The name describes the method of his music. "No" external sound source is connected to "inputs" of the "mixing board." Mostly an improviser, occasionally a composer for dancers, an instrumentalist for compositions.

Nimb 19.1

Nimb 19-1

Oosslloo

>> video Sachiko M & Toshimaru Nakamura
>> info

back

2009-09-14T10:45:00.010+03:00

download

>> bonus

Baadeh Sabah by Albert Lamorisse

2009-08-19T18:30:00.002+03:00

"A well- known French filmmaker, Albert Lamorisse, under the aus- pices of Iran's Ministry of Culture and Art, produced the poetic film "Lovers' Wind" (1969). Eighty-five percent of this dramatically visual film is shot from a helicopter, providing a kaleidoscopic view of the vast expanses, natural beauty, historical monuments, cities and villages of Iran. The "narrators" of the film are the various winds (the warm, crimson, evil and lovers' winds), which accord- ing to folklore, inhabit Iran. They sweep the viewers from place to place across the Iranian landscape, introducing the incredible variety of life and scenery in Iran. The camera, defying gravity, with smoothness and agility, provides a bird's eye view, caressing minarets and domes, peek- ing over mountain tops beyond, gliding over remote villages to reveal the life enclosed within the high mud-brick walls, bouncing along with the local wildlife, following the rhyth- mic, sinuous flow of the oil pipelines and train tracks, and hovering over the mirror-like nmosaic of the rice paddies that reflect the clouds and sky. The film is a testimonial to the Iranian landscape and people over which so many dynasties and kings have ruled and have, in turn, passed away. Ironically, on the tenth anniversarv of the completion of the film, yet another seem- ingly powerful dynasty (Pahlavi) has fallen, leaving, as the film points out, the land and the migrating tribal nomads who have survived more or less intact for centuries. Upon completion of the film, the Ministry of Culture and Art decided that Lamorisse had not sufficiently emphasized the industrialization of Iran. So he was called back to film additional sequences documenting that progress. This task was never completed, because the helicopter crashed while filming the Karaj Dam near Tehran, plunging Lamorisse and his crew to their deaths. This film, whose storybrook style of narration is often contrived, does not purport to be a social document on Iran; nevertheless, it has never been shown publicly in theaters in Iran." ºº -- Hamid Naficy

recommended as well:
Claude LeLouch - Iran

Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask

2009-08-15T18:53:00.002+03:00

Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask explores for the first time on film the pre-eminent theorist of the anti-colonial movements of this century. Fanon's two major works, Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth, were pioneering studies of the psychological impact of racism on both colonized and colonizer. Jean-Paul Sartre recognized Fanon as the figure "through whose voice the Third World finds and speaks for itself." This innovative film biography restores Fanon to his rightful place at the center of contemporary discussions around post-colonial identity.

Isaac Julien, the celebrated black British director of such provocative films as Looking for Langston and Young Soul Rebels, integrates the facts of Fanon's brief but remarkably eventful life with his long and tortuous inner journey. Julien elegantly weaves together interviews with family members and friends, documentary footage, readings from Fanon's work and dramatizations of crucial moments in Fanon's life. Cultural critics Stuart Hall and Françoise Verges position Fanon's work in his own time and draw out its implications for our own.

>> watch

Anti-Œdipus

2009-08-13T10:45:00.002+03:00

Anti-Œdipus (1972) is a book by the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and psychoanalyst Félix Guattari. It is the first volume of Capitalism and Schizophrenia, the second volume being A Thousand Plateaus (1980). It presents an analysis of human psychology, economics, society, and history, showing how "primitive", "despotic", and "capitalist regimes" differ in their organization of production, inscription, and consumption. It describes how capitalism channels all desires through an axiomatic money-based economy, a form of organization that is abstract, rather than local or material.

>> wiki
>> the book

It Felt Like a Kiss

2009-08-09T18:22:00.002+03:00

Adam Curtis has gone a bit mad. The insultingly gifted documentary maker behind The Century Of The Self and The Power Of Nightmares seemed rather quiet of late. In fact, since his 2007 BBC2 series The Trap, his only visible pieces of work were two short (and superb) mini-documentaries he created for my BBC4 series Screenwipe and Newswipe.

He's made a new documentary called It Felt Like A Kiss. Except it isn't just a documentary. It's also a piece of interactive theatre, with music composed by Damon Albarn and performed by the Kronos Quartet. And it doesn't take place in a cinema or concert hall, but across five floors of a deserted office block in Manchester.

It Felt Like a Kiss tells the story of America’s rise to power in the golden age of pop, and the unforeseen consequences it had on the world and in our minds. Beginning in 1959, the show spotlights the dreams and desires that America inspired during the ’60s, when the world began to embrace the country and its culture as never before. But as this daring production unfolds across five floors, blending music with documentary and the disorientating whirl of a fairground ghost train, the audience is forced to face the dark forces that were veiled by the American dream – a dream that ultimately returns to haunt us all.

>> trailer

News from Nowhere

2009-08-08T17:29:00.002+03:00

News from Nowhere (1890) is a classic work combining utopian socialism and soft science fiction written by the artist, designer and socialist pioneer William Morris. In the book, the narrator, William Guest, falls asleep after returning from a meeting of the Socialist League and awakes to find himself in a future society based on common ownership and democratic control of the means of production. In this society there is no private property, no big cities, no authority, no monetary system, no divorce, no courts, no prisons, and no class systems. This agrarian society functions simply because the people find pleasure in nature, and therefore they find pleasure in their work.

The book explores a number of aspects of this society, including its organisation and the relationships which it engenders between people. Morris cleverly fuses Marxism and the romance tradition when he presents himself as an enchanted figure in a time and place different from Victorian England. As Morris the romance character, quests for love and fellowship-and through them for a reborn self- he encounters romance archetypes in Marxist guises.

>> the book

Sans Soleil

2009-08-07T16:13:00.001+03:00

Sans Soleil (Sunless in English) is a 1983 film by French director Chris Marker. The title is from the song cycle Sunless by Modest Mussorgsky. Sans Soleil is a meditation on the nature of human memory and the inability to recall the context and nuances of memory and as a result, how the perception of personal and global histories are affected.

Stretching the genre of documentary, this experimental essay-film is a rich composition of thoughts, images and scenes, mainly from Japan and Guinea-Bissau, "two extreme poles of survival". Some other scenes were filmed in Iceland, Paris, and San Francisco. A female narrator reads from letters supposedly sent to her by the (fictitious) cameraman Sandor Krasna. Sans Soleil is often labelled as a documentary or travelogue, however it contains fictional elements and moves from one location to another without regard to a location or character-based narrative.

>> imdb

Encounters at the End of the World

2009-08-07T12:24:00.000+03:00

In the most hostile, barren, alien environment on the planet - you meet the most interesting people.
Welcome to Antarctica - like you've never experienced it. You've seen the extraordinary marine life, the retreating glaciers and, of course, the penguins, but leave it to award-winning, iconoclastic filmmaker Werner Herzog (Grizzly Man, Rescue Dawn) to be the first to explore the South Pole's most fascinating inhabitants...humans. In this one-of-kind documentary, Herzog turns his camera on a group of remarkable individuals, "professional dreamers" who work, play and struggle to survive in a harsh landscape of mesmerizing, otherworldly beauty - perhaps the last frontier on earth.

>> Werner Herzog

body-drawing communicator for distant partners

2009-08-05T22:13:00.002+03:00

Mutsugoto is an intimate communication device placed in the bedroom environment. Instead of exchanging e-mail or SMS messages using generic interfaces in business-like venues, Mutsugoto allows distant partners to communicate through the language of touch as expressed on the canvas of the human body. A specialized computer vision and projection system allows users to write or draw on their own bodies while laying in bed. Drawings made by one partner are transmitted to and revealed on the body of the remote partner.

Human intimacy is a significant but often neglected part of modern life. More people now than ever carry on long distance relationships with romantic partners, sometimes for extended periods of time. However today's communication systems are impersonal and generic. E-mail, for example, is often read and written on the same computer and at the same desk that one uses for any other kind of communication. Phone calls and SMS messages are sent and received between partners on the same devices used for work and business.

Mutsugoto is a new kind of communication device meant to be used only by romantic couples in long distance relationships. Breaking away from traditional systems intended for operation by any pair of people in any situation, the form and function of Mutsugoto is designed to more strongly reflect the character of an intimate bond.

Mutsugoto is meant to be installed in the bedrooms of two remote partners. Each partner lays on their bed and wears a special ring that emits an infrared beacon, visible only to a camera mounted above. A computer vision system tracks the movement of the ring finger and projects virtual pen strokes on the user's own body. The silhouette of the user is also captured and serves as the "canvas" for this drawing. The completed drawing is transmitted to the remote site where the same silhouette is projected softly on the bed. After laying in the same position, the distant partner can reveal the drawing by tracing their ring finger around their body. Special bed linens and curtains were crafted to enhance the mood of this romantic communication environment.

>> distancelab

Ninety Years of Inspiration

2009-08-03T22:37:00.002+03:00

Inspired by a vision of bringing artists and craftsmen together to start a movement in art which would change the future of the world, Walter Gropius opened the doors to Bauhaus. The year was 1919 when Gropius founded Staatliches Bauhaus Weimar. Germany was bankrupt after a devastating World War I and the younger generation was eager to make positive changes.

“Architects, painters, sculptors, we must all return to crafts! For there is no such thing as “professional art”. There is no essential difference between the artist and the craftsman. The artist is an exalted craftsman. By the grace of Heaven and in rare moments of inspiration which transcend the will, art may unconsciously blossom from the labour of his hand, but a base in handicrafts is essential to every artist. It is there that the original source of creativity lies.

Let us therefore create a new guild of craftsmen without the class-distinctions that raise an arrogant barrier between craftsmen and artists! Let us desire, conceive, and create the new building of the future together. It will combine architecture, sculpture, and painting in a single form, and will one day rise towards the heavens from the hands of a million workers as the crystalline symbol of a new and coming faith.” — Walter Gropius

Gropius named the school Bauhaus, which is the transliteration for building house, but according to the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, it stands for “an eagerness to experiment, openness, creativity, a close link to industrial practice and inter-nationality.”

We hope you too can experiment with the creativity of art and be inspired by the Bauhaus movement. Please visit the sites of the artists and sources by clicking on the images or titles.

>> more info

Concrete!

2009-07-26T19:24:00.002+03:00

Ruth and Marvin Sackner share their love of words and images with an intimate tour of their Miami Beach home/museum -- the worlds largest private collection of concrete/visual poetry from such twentieth century art movements as Dada, Bauhaus, Italian Futurism, Russian and Eastern European Avant Garde, Surrealism, De Stijl, Ultra, Tabu-Dada, Lettrisme, and Ultra-Lettrisme. Over sixty-thousand objects from around the word speak volumes about a compulsive and joyful life of collecting art.

>> download

Existentialism is a Humanism

2009-07-25T14:55:00.002+03:00

part2

0 / ∞

2009-07-24T22:33:00.001+03:00

zoom

Sad e

2009-07-22T20:10:00.002+03:00

Sade - Hang on to your love (Bogdan edit)

2009-07-21T02:52:00.001+03:00

Archigram

2009-07-19T18:08:00.002+03:00

Archigram was an avant-garde architectural group formed in the 1960s - based at the Architectural Association, London - that was futurist, anti-heroic and pro-consumerist, drawing inspiration from technology in order to create a new reality that was solely expressed through hypothetical projects. The main members of the group were Peter Cook, Warren Chalk, Ron Herron, Dennis Crompton, Michael Webb and David Greene. The pamphlet Archigram I was printed in 1961 to proclaim their ideas. Committed to a 'high tech', light weight, infra-structural approach that was focused towards survival technology, the group experimented with modular technology, mobility through the environment, space capsules and mass-consumer imagery. Their works offered a seductive vision of a glamorous future machine age; however, social and environmental issues were left unaddressed.

“A new generation of architecture must arise with forms and spaces which seems to reject the precepts of ‘Modern’ yet in fact retains those precepts. We have chosen to by pass the decaying Bauhaus image which is an insult to functionalism. You can roll out steel – any length. You can blow up a balloon – any size. You can mould plastic – any shape. Blokes that built the Forth Bridge – they didn’t worry.”

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John Cage and Raashan Roland Kirk - Sound??

2009-07-18T22:32:00.001+03:00

Although Rahsaan Roland Kirk and John Cage never actually meet in this film (Cage's enigmatic questions about sound are intercut with some of Kirk's more ambitious experiments with it) these two very different musical iconoclasts share a similar vision of the boundless possibilities of music. Kirk plays three saxes at once, switches to flute, incorporates tapes of birds played backwards, and finally hands out whistles to his audience and encourages them to accompany him, "in the key of W, if you please." Cage, on the other hand, is preparing a work for musical bicycle with David Tudor and Merce Cunningham at the Seville Theatre in London. Cage meets Rahsaan's music in an echo chamber, and he ends his search for the sound of silence in his favorite spot -- the anechoic chamber -- where it turns out to be the uproar of "your nervous system in operation." -- Martin Williams, JAZZ TIMES

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Antonio Sant'Elia

2009-07-17T17:48:00.002+03:00

No architecture has existed since 1700. A moronic mixture of the most various stylistic elements used to mask the skeletons of modern houses is called modern architecture. The new beauty of cement and iron are profaned by the superimposition of motley decorative incrustations that cannot be justified either by constructive necessity or by our (modern) taste, and whose origins are in Egyptian, Indian or Byzantine antiquity and in that idiotic flowering of stupidity and impotence that took the name of neoclassicism.

>> read more

>> Antonio Sant'Elia

André Breton - First Manifesto of Surrealism

2009-07-17T17:38:00.002+03:00

So strong is the belief in life, in what is most fragile in life--real life, I mean--that in the end this belief is lost. Man, that inveterate dreamer, daily more discontent with his destiny, has trouble assessing the objects he has been led to use, objects that his nonchalance has brought his way, or that he has earned through his own efforts, almost always through his own efforts, for he has agreed to work, at least he has not refused to try his luck (or what he calls his luck!). At this point he feels extremely modest: he knows what women he has had, what silly affairs he has been involved in; he is unimpressed by his wealth or his poverty, in this respect he is still a newborn babe and, as for the approval of his conscience, I confess that he does very nicely without it. If he still retains a certain lucidity, all he can do is turn back toward his childhood which, however his guides and mentors may have botched it, still strikes him as somehow charming...

>> read more

Hannes Böck - BRD DDR

2009-07-15T22:44:00.004+03:00

This is a 2 episodes series of a documentary/art installation, done in 2003 (BRD) and 2005 (DDR) by Hannes Böck, Vienna. It consists of selected long shots of architecture or simpler urban space and is ment to function as a cinema verite passage through the time, history and ideology enduring architecture ensembles from before 1945, that dominate or at least have influence on german urban ensembles still.

>> Hannes Böck

repeat

2009-06-16T21:14:00.002+03:00

Socialist Realism

2009-06-14T19:54:00.002+03:00

Socialist realism is a teleologically-oriented style of realistic art which has as its purpose the furtherance of the goals of socialism and communism. Although related, it should not be confused with social realism, a type of art that realistically depicts subjects of social concern.

The initial tendencies toward socialist realism date from the mid-19th century. They include revolutionary literature in Great Britain (the poetry of the Chartist movement), Germany (Herwegh, Freiligrath, and G. Weerth), and France (the literature of the Paris Commune and Pottier's "Internationale.") Socialist realism emerged as a literary method in the early 20th century in Russia, especially in the works of Gorky. It was also apparent in the works of writers like Kotsiubinsky, Rainis, Akopian, and Edvoshvili. Following Gorky, writers in several countries combined the realistic depiction of life with the expression of a socialist world view. They included Barbusse, Andersen Nexo, and John Reed.

Socialist realism had its roots in neoclassicism and the traditions of realism in Russian literature of the 19th century that described the life of simple people. It was exemplified by the aesthetic philosophy of Maxim Gorky. The work of the Peredvizhniki ("Wanderers," a Russian realist movement of the late 19th / early 20th centuries), Jacques-Louis David and Ilya Yefimovich Repin were notable influences.

>> architecture
>> sculpture

Aldous Huxley vs. George Orwell

2009-06-01T22:14:00.001+03:00

:: CLICK ::

Sergei Parajanov Documentary

2009-05-28T22:46:00.002+03:00

Sergei Parajanov was a Soviet Armenian film director and artist, widely regarded as one of the 20th century's greatest masters of cinema.

He invented his own unparalleled cinematic style. His oeuvre is extremely poetic, artistic and visionary and is acclaimed worldwide. But as it was highly unfit with principal rules of socialist realism (the only sanctioned art style in USSR) and his controversial stance and escapades to boot, cinema authorities regularly denied him permission to make films.

>> watch
>> more info

Fully Awake: Black Mountain College

2009-05-25T20:50:00.003+03:00

Tucked in the mountains of Western North Carolina, Black Mountain College (1933-1957) has emerged as one of the most influencial experiments in education. Though short lived, Black Mountain College's unique model inspired and shaped the 20th century American modern art.

Fully Awake: Black Mountain College is a documentary film exploring "education in a democracy," and highlights the College's belief that the creative arts and practical responsibilities are equally important to intellectual development. Life skills are developed through democratic governance, art exploration, manual labor, and community living.

Fully Awake reflects on the unique educational style and long-term significance of the school using archive photography, interviews with students, teachers, historians, and current artists, and narration. While popularly known as the location for such events as Buckminster Fuller's geodesic dome, John Cage's first 'happening' and the publishing of the Black Mountain Review, the film focuses on the unique educational approach of Black Mountain College to balance academics, art, manual labor and communal living to educate the whole person--head, hand, and heart.

>> watch trailer

...

2009-05-11T13:03:00.003+03:00

Beirut - Nantes (Bogdan edit)

Peter Greenaway - A Walk Through H (1978)

2009-05-03T19:37:00.001+03:00

As the camera pores over 92 mixed media pictures hung in a gallery (all painted exquisitely by Greenaway himself), a pedantic narrator describes his mysterious journey to H, using the pictures as maps. Subtitled The Reincarnation of an Ornithologist, this film seems to be concerned with the migration of a soul (to Heaven or Hell) following the migratory paths of birds (which feature prominently) - but along the way it takes in the curious provenance and intrepretation of each painting, and it documents a bewildering intrigue between the narrator, his mentor Tulse Luper and his rival van Heuten (keeper of the owls at the Amsterdam Zoo).

Anthony McCall & Andrew Tyndall - Argument

2009-04-19T00:55:00.002+03:00

Argument is a dense and provocative feature-length essay examining one issue of the New York Times magazine to investigate the ideology of news, the language of fashion and the construction of masculinity.

"The twin principles of modernism and marketing: seeing fresh promise in familiar things."

Anthony McCall and Andrew Tyndall's legendary and provocative essay film Argument, first screened at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in 1978, has been almost unseen for the last twenty years. LUX has now made a new High Definition restoration of the film, and its trenchant analysis of media ideology seems more pertinent than ever. Three male voices dissect one edition of the New York Times through a series of locked-off shots, revealing the prejudice and latent content of news and advertisements, reading images as texts and presenting text as an image. Fashion photographs are used as a starting point for a political investigation of news, advertising, and images of masculinity - while at the same time, the filmmakers reflect on their own position and the possibility of radical film practice. Influenced by both the America and European avant-gardes, notably Godard and Hollis Frampton, Argument is stylistically beautiful and relentless in its enquiry.

>> download

Rokolectiv Festival 09

2009-04-10T18:26:00.002+03:00

http://www.rokolectiv.ro

Tim Sweeney (DFA, NY) @ Fantastic Club

2009-04-02T11:02:00.002+03:00

Tim Sweeney ( beatsinspace.net/DFA, NY )
+ Khidja & Bogman

@ Fantastic Club
Calea Buzesti 50-52, 6th floor
( Volksbank building )
Friday 3.04, 22.00

>> listen

Emotional Orchestra

2009-04-01T23:29:00.002+03:00

Commissioned by Electra as part of Her Noise
Tate Modern Turbine Hall, London
23 September 2005

New York based artist and composer Marina Rosenfeld presented a new performance for 40 female improvisors for an electro-acoustic string orchestra. Following a 2-day workshop involving London based musicians and non-musicians, participants performed Rosenfeld's animated improvisational score using an array of bowable instruments, including violins, cello, electric guitars, percussion and harp.

The 40 minute composition elicits extraordinary music-making, at turns brutal and delicate, from an ensemble of where many of the players will have never touched an instrument before. The work also features Rosenfeld's own graphic notation, in the form of video-animation, and a custom-designed garment created by New York fashion collective As Four.

>> listen

some books

2009-04-01T22:49:00.006+03:00

Mapping Ideology
edited by Slavoj Žižek

Not so long ago, the term ""ideology"" was in considerable disrepute. Its use had become associated with a claim to know a truth beyond ideology, a radically unfashionable position. What then explains the sudden revival of interest in grappling with the questions that 'ideology' poses to social and cultural theory, as well as to political practice? Mapping Ideology presents a comprehensive sampling of the most important contemporary writing on the subject. Slavoj Zizek's introductory essay surveys the development of the concept from Marx to the present. Terry Eagleton, Peter Dews and Seyla Benhabib assess the decisive contributions of Lukacs and the Frankfurt School. A different tradition is revealed in an essay by the French post-structuralist Michel Pecheux, while the study of ideology is exemplified in classic texts by Theodor Adorno, Jacques Lacan and Louis Althusser. An intersection of Gramscian and Althusserian motifs appears in a now famous debate over 'the dominant ideology thesis', reprinted here. Pierre Bourdieu succinctly formulates his departure from this tradition in an interview with Eagleton. Further readings of the ideological are explored by Richard Rorty and Michele Barrett. Finally Fredric Jameson supplies an authoritative statement of the nature and position of the ideological in late capitalist society. Mapping Ideology is an invaluable guide to what is now the most dynamic field of cultural theory.

>> here

Artistic Citizenship. A Public Voice for the Arts
by Mary Schmidt (Editor), Randy Martin (Editor)

How do people in the creative arts prepare for, and participate in, civic life? This question is central to anyone involved in arts education and in the creation of public policy for the arts. Celebrity endorsements of political candidates and controversies over NEA funding aside, the role of the artists - student and professional - must increasingly be couched in terms of the social: artists make art, but they also exercise their cultural citizenship as explainers, teachers, and advocates.

This volume will be developed at NYU, where the Tisch School of the Arts (not coincidentally founded in 1965, the year the NEA came into being) is one of the country's premier institutions for arts education. Mary Schmidt Campbell and Randy Martin are putting together a volume that will explore the central questions of "artistic citizenship," a term they create here to explore a unique and powerful form of civic identity.

>> here

Noir Anxiety
by Kelly Oliver & Benigno Trigo

Among the elements that define the classic film noir-chiaroscuro lighting, voice-over narration, and such archetypal characters as the world-weary private eye and the femme fatale-perhaps no element is more responsible for the genre's continued popularity among movie buffs, filmmakers, and critics than the palpable sense of anxiety that emanates from the screen. Because the genre emerged in the shadow of the Second World War, this profound psychological and philosophical unease is usually ascribed either to postwar fears about the atomic bomb or to the reactions of returning soldiers to a new social landscape. In Noir Anxiety, however, Kelly Oliver and Benigno Trigo interpret what has been called the "free-floating anxiety" of film noir as concrete apprehensions about race and sexuality.

>> here

2009-03-27T12:31:00.000+02:00

2009-03-24T00:30:00.001+02:00

clickable

2009-03-18T19:15:00.003+02:00

Alison Scarpulla

2009-03-16T16:32:00.003+02:00

>> more

Passageways: James Turrell

2009-03-13T13:05:00.001+02:00

This was produced for the museum of modern art, paris in 2006. It documents the infamously reclusive Earthworks artist James Turrell, and his majestic Rodin Crater project that he's been working on for about 25 years now. Since Turrell's work is not open to the public, and you're likely to get shot trespassing out in New Mexico where this sits, this is your only chance to see it. Highly recommended for those interested in late modern and contemporary art.

A pilot for many years, James Turrell is today the greatest American "Land Art" artist, and considers the sky as his studio. Upon spectacular and historical aerial images of Arizona's canyons, Turrell recalls his formal research on natural light and his friendship with the Hopi Indians. The film gives Turrell the opportunity to present his masterpiece, Rodin Crater, a true celestial light "observatory".

>> download

Art Safari - Relational Art

2009-03-08T20:46:00.002+02:00

Award-winning writer and director Ben Lewis, a self-confessed “art geek”, takes an off-beat tour around the fringes of contemporary art.

While all eyes in Nineties Britain focussed on our own Young British Artists, a different global art movement was evolving. The leading French critic Nicolas Bourriaud, described it as 'Relational Art'. Armed with Bourriaud's book Relational Aesthetics, Ben goes in search of what he hopes might be a new 'ism'.

But trouble lies ahead: many of the artists whose reputations were advanced by Bourriaud's exhibitions and writings, refuse to be interviewed, deny they are relational, or once interviewed, try to ban Art Safari from showing their work.

>> download

Self Portrait

2009-02-25T22:57:00.002+02:00

A lovely video made by my friend Mara Ploscaru. Enjoy!

>> info

repeat

2009-02-24T12:12:00.002+02:00

something else

2009-02-22T21:31:00.006+02:00

Boat Club - Always Away

Beach House - Holy Dances

Sacred System - Galactic Zone

Antena - Camino del Sol (Terje carevasazica edit)

Kaito - Inside River

Alessi Brothers - Seabird

Jill Scott - Slowly Surely (Theo Parrish remix)

Amish Hackers

2009-02-20T14:26:00.003+02:00

The Amish have the undeserved reputation of being luddites, of people who refuse to employ new technology. It's well known the strictest of them don't use electricity, or automobiles, but rather farm with manual tools and ride in a horse and buggy. In any debate about the merits of embracing new technology, the Amish stand out as offering an honorable alternative of refusal. Yet Amish lives are anything but anti-technological. In fact on my several visits with them, I have found them to be ingenious hackers and tinkers, the ultimate makers and do-it-yourselfers and surprisingly pro technology.

>> read more

review

2009-02-19T17:15:00.007+02:00

Bogdan - Harmony Within Repetitive Structures

"Playing proper ambient with a harrowing, uneasy edge, Bogdan’s borderline neo-classical compositions are rife with unresolved interludes. It’s a sparse, uncompromising, and ultimately successful attempt to explore the inherent beauty of indeterminacy."

by Andy Phillips & Philip Sherburne via flavorwire

We stopped being wise

2009-02-16T21:34:00.003+02:00

Barry Schwartz makes a passionate call for “practical wisdom” as an antidote to a society gone mad with bureaucracy. He argues powerfully that rules often fail us, incentives often backfire, and practical, everyday wisdom will help rebuild our world.

>> TED

late night track

2009-02-13T00:17:00.003+02:00

"STATEMENT" exhibition, curated by Lia Perjovschi

2009-02-12T16:37:00.001+02:00

For the first time in the last twenty years, a bank becomes an art centre. A centre in the centre of the city, not at its outskirts, as we were used so far by the logic of transition. The spaces for contemporary art, had they not been already displaced, closed or thrown at the periphery, are becoming smaller and smaller or more business-related.

The history of the Romanian contemporary art is the history of the losses – a place, a market, a man, a few ideas. And, as always, an exaggeration is surpassed by an other, and the lack of the assorted art units is politically concealed by the ever too big and too dependent Central Unit: the museum.

An art magazine created a BIennale and now opens ONE permanent centre for the contemporary art.

>> more info

???

2009-02-11T16:17:00.003+02:00

A New View of Human Capacity

2009-02-10T22:02:00.001+02:00

Sir Ken Robinson, innovation expert and author of Out of Our Minds: Learning to Be Creative, overcame polio to become one of the world's leaders in the development of creativity in business, education and human resources.

Hear him hold forth on the potential and capacity of truly "human" resources.

>> fora.tv

In Mono

2009-02-10T11:25:00.003+02:00

photo by LOX2

last night

2009-02-08T14:52:00.005+02:00

Waking Life

2009-02-06T20:38:00.001+02:00

Waking Life, a film from director Richard Linklater (The Newton Boys, Suburbia) is less a film and more series of conversations. It takes place within the confines of a dream, where ideas reverberate between people and things make sense while making no sense. This is a film that requires people to pay acute attention to what the actors say on screen. The experience is like listening to people debating philosophy on a college campus. However, the first attention grabber is the animation. Waking Life is a gorgeous film. Linklater filmed the movie on digital camera, then used a team of over thirty animators to animate the film. Each animator was responsible for a character, giving a sense of consistency to each person while providing a huge sense of stylistic diversity between segments. Since this is animation, it allows the freedom to express ideas not just verbally, but visually.

>> imdb

The Perception of Time

2009-02-04T18:06:00.002+02:00

by William James

In the next two chapters I shall deal with what is sometimes called internal perception, or the perception of time, and of events as occupying a date therein, especially when the date is a past one, in which case the perception in question goes by the name of memory. To remember a thing as past, it is necessary that the notion of 'past' should be one of our 'ideas.' We shall see in the chapter on Memory that many things come to be thought by us as past, not because of any intrinsic quality of their own, but rather because they are associated with other things which for us signify pastness. But how do these things get their pastness? What is the original of our experience of pastness, from whence we get the meaning of the term? It is this question which the reader is invited to consider in the present chapter. We shall see that we have a constant feeling sui generis of pastness, to which every one of our experiences in turn falls a prey. To think a thing as past is to think it amongst the objects or in the direction of the objects which at the present moment appear affected by this quality. This is the original of our notion of past time, upon which memory and history build their systems. And in this chapter we shall consider this immediate sense of time alone.

>> read more

The making of The Shining (by Vivian Kubrick)

2009-01-29T23:56:00.004+02:00

Stanley Kubrick allowed his then-17-year-old daughter, Vivian, to make a documentary about the production of THE SHINING.

w d y m w d i m

2009-01-28T22:57:00.001+02:00

Waltz with Bashir

2009-01-27T23:33:00.002+02:00

Waltz with Bashir is a 2008 Golden Globe award-winning and Academy Award-nominated Israeli film directed by Ari Folman.

The film deals with the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre.

>> more info

obiter dicta

2009-01-22T21:05:00.004+02:00

War Photographer - James Nachtwey

2009-01-21T21:30:00.008+02:00

Photojournalist James Nachtwey is considered by many to be the greatest war photographer of recent decades. He has covered conflicts and major social issues in more than 30 countries.

For the past three decades, James Nachtwey has devoted himself to documenting wars, conflicts and critical social issues, working in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza, Israel, Indonesia, Thailand, India, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, the Philippines, South Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Rwanda, South Africa, Russia, Bosnia, Chechnya, Kosovo, Romania, Brazil and the United States.

Nachtwey has been a contract photographer with Time since 1984. However, when certain stories he wanted to cover -- such as Romanian orphanages and famine in Somalia -- garnered no interest from magazines, he self-financed trips there. He is known for getting up close to his subjects, or as he says, "in the same intimate space that the subjects inhabit," and he passes that sense of closeness on to the viewer.

In putting himself in the middle of conflict, his intention is to record the truth, to document the struggles of humanity, and with this, to wake people up and stir them to action.

>> watch
>> VII photo agency

The Silence

2009-01-21T21:09:00.002+02:00

by Ingmar Bergman

>> watch

Technocalyps: Transhuman - Part One

2009-01-18T19:58:00.003+02:00

Technocalyps is a 3 part documentary about ‘transhumanism’, an ideology assuming that we approach an era where humans, as we know them, are no longer the driving force of civilization. All technological developments seem to converge to one main goal: to overcome humanity, to try and create something transhuman.

Part One: Transhuman

Part 1 gives an overview of recent technological developments (biogenetics, artificial intelligence, robotics, implants, nanotechnology,…) and prognoses made by leading scientists about the impact of these developments in the near future.

Watch: | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |

Search for meaning

2009-01-17T00:29:00.002+02:00

Conference in Toronto by Dr. Viktor Frankl on search for meaning.

** This video belongs to logotherapy.univie.ac.at ** you may find full lenght recordings of most interviews.

>> more info

René Magritte documentary

2009-01-15T23:25:00.002+02:00

"My painting is visible images which conceal nothing; they evoke mystery and, indeed, when one sees one of my pictures, one asks oneself this simple question, "What does that mean?". It does not mean anything, because mystery means nothing either, it is unknowable."

>> watch
>> more info

Salvador Dali: Journey of a man

2009-01-13T19:48:00.002+02:00

| Part2 | Part3 | Part4 |

>> more info

Tuesday dub

2009-01-09T12:39:00.002+02:00

>> here

John Cage / Wim Mertens "So that each person is in charge of himself"

2009-01-06T16:51:00.002+02:00

>> listen

Was "The Paltinis School" an utopian experience?

2008-12-29T18:22:00.004+02:00

>> romanian version
>> english version

Dan Gilbert: Exploring the frontiers of happiness

2008-12-22T15:12:00.003+02:00

Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert says our beliefs about what will make us happy are often wrong - a premise he supports with intriguing research, and explains in his accessible and unexpectedly funny book, Stumbling on Happiness.

He believes that, in our ardent, lifelong pursuit of happiness, most of us have the wrong map. In the same way that optical illusions fool our eyes -- and fool everyone’s eyes in the same way -- Gilbert argues that our brains systematically misjudge what will make us happy. And these quirks in our cognition make humans very poor predictors of our own bliss.

>> watch
>> download

Max Ernst Documentary

2008-12-18T00:55:00.002+02:00

Max Ernst was a German painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet, considered one of the chief representatives of Dadaism and Surrealism.

This 100 minutes documentary covers the life and work of the artist.

Three Dots & Sandra of the Tulip House

2008-12-16T23:40:00.001+02:00

Matthew Buckingham and Joachim Koester's video installation Sandra of the Tuliphouse or How to Live in a Free State, 2001, is a ruminative work inspired by the complex history of Christiania, a famous anarchistic community established in Copenhagen in 1971. Divided between large freestanding screens--each accompanied by its own unidirectional speaker to minimize the discordant buildup of sound--Sandra of the Tuliphouse comprises five independent twelve-to-twenty-minute video loops that may be watched in any order, in part or (by the more determined visitor) from beginning to end. Making its belated New York debut at the Kitchen, Buckingham and Koester's project feels oddly removed from real time, its ostensible subject an anachronistic curiosity repositioned as a locus for open-ended reflection.

While the project relies on a deliberate blurring of fact and fiction, historical record and self-conscious mythmaking, we are at least fairly certain that Christiania--however unlikely it is sometimes made to seem--is a real place. A self-governing squat located on eighty-five acres of land owned by the Danish Defense Ministry, it is currently inhabited by nearly one thousand people, but is scheduled for government dissolution next year. Buckingham and Koester explore the site and its social, political, and philosophical implications through a suite of meandering narratives related from the point of view of Sandra, a fictional character who moves into the tumbledown "free state" for a summer. Commenting on her situation in placid voice-over, Sandra poses at least as many questions as she answers, moving from accounts and enactments of her daily activities to divergent observations on the very particular context in which they occur.

Resolutely nonlinear and multivalent, Sandra of the Tuliphouse exhibits all the pros and cons of dinner-party conversation: Opinions are expounded with unshakable insistence but a dearth of verifiable supporting evidence; allusions and references of questionable provenance and relevance are continually introduced; absorbing problems are raised only to be abandoned unresolved. The work ranges across subjects including the intertwined histories of the libertarian movement and the recreational drug economy, the linked ideas of the frontier and the border, and militarism and utopianism--all presented (nominally at least) in the context of Christiania's shifting fortunes. And just as the community's triumphs and failings are extrapolated into a model for the challenges of idealism in general, its Copenhagen environs provide an opportunity for amiable pondering on the progress of European urban civilization as a whole.

Discussing the origins and meanings of the apparently ubiquitous design of Christiania's flag--three yellow dots against a scarlet ground--Sandra suggests that it implies doubt and transition, possibility without conclusion, infinity. If Sandra of the Tuliphouse has a critical weakness, it is perhaps a surfeit of interest, a profusion of anecdotal detail that shifts the viewer's response from genuine fascination to a kind of appreciative torpor. The voice-over, at first rather refreshing in its utter lack of drama (the actress who plays Sandra is an amateur), eventually becomes soporific. And as the work's diegetic paths fork and fork again, our compulsion to sort the actual from the fanciful gradually loses momentum. Like Sandra herself, we are immediately compelled by Christiania's insular milieu, but to remain within the orbit of this work for more than, say, half an hour is to feel the pull of one's own world with a renewed intensity.

--Artforum

>> download

Indymedia Romania

2008-12-14T17:21:00.002+02:00

Started as a project (mailing list on indymedia server) in February 2003 and with official status as part of the global network since July 2004, Indymedia Romania (IMC-Romania) is made up of a mixed group of people - techies, media producers, journalists, philosophers, artists, researchers - and represents a variety of interests including social justice, human rights, minority struggles, feminism, ecology, peace as a positive value, media freedom, and the non-commercial uses of IT. Although diverse, we are united by a passion for the freedom of expression (or everyone's right to speak about what matters to them everyday, not once every 4 years) and the freedom of information (not just free access to information, but the right to create it ourselves), a desire to promote the democratization of technologies and expertise, and a belief that everyone has a right and responsibility to play an active role in transforming their world.

>> more info

Landscape with Terry Riley

2008-12-11T21:17:00.002+02:00

data="http://ubu.artmob.ca/video/flash/flvplayer.swf?file=Ashley-Robert_Opera-4-TV-6_Terry-Riley_1976-sm.flv&autostart=false">

From Music with Roots in the Aether, an artwork by Robert Ashley.

>> download

wolken

2008-12-10T13:42:00.001+02:00

lambda print on alumium

71 x 52cm

physically, clouds consist of an accumulation of extremely fine drops of water or ice crystals. within a complex interaction of various climatic factors they can take on a great variety of forms, which appear instable and diffuse. such non-linear dynamic systems are the research subject of the chaos theory, which has emerged from weather research and the mathematical analysis of price developments.

in the series of cloud photographs, taken from a height of 9000m, the entities disengage from their subject. the object can no longer be clearly discerned, the appearance of the surface is reminiscent of skin or water surfaces. the photographs reveal resemblances to both micro and macro structures.

by Carsten Nicolai

Aldous Huxley - Gravity Of Light

2008-12-08T20:50:00.002+02:00

A feature film essay on Aldous Huxley's cultural criticism and social prophecy in light of the new millennium.

Narration: Dr. Jean Houston.

Aldous Huxley: The Gravity Of Light incorporates rare archival footage, computer rendered 3D animation, speculative fictions, and selections from his essays. The film begins by reflecting upon that crucial, prophetic work "Brave New World" (1932, Aldous Huxley) and then moves to a further inquiry into the human ramifications of current technological change. The film also recalls the impact of Huxley's LSD-25 and mescaline experimentations and writings for a generation of youth and examines the utopianistic impulses associated with the Rave scene.

>> more

LHC and Unified Field Theory by Frank Wilczek

2008-12-08T17:21:00.002+02:00

The Commonwealth Club of California

San Francisco, CA

Sep 25th, 2008

Light and matter have long been seen as separate: spirit vs. flesh, earthy vs. divine. However, according to Wilczek, physics has blurred the line between light and matter, showing that reality is far from permanent, but rather ever-changing.

The 2004 Nobel Prize winner in physics takes a closer look at the very nature of reality, and how our perceptions of reality have changed over time.

>> via fora.tv

Propaedeutic value of Esperanto

2008-12-06T19:54:00.001+02:00

The propaedeutic value of Esperanto is the benefit that using Esperanto as an introduction to foreign language study has on the teaching of subsequent foreign languages. Several studies, such as that of Helmar Frank at the University of Paderborn and the San Marino International Academy of Sciences, have concluded that one year of Esperanto in school, which produces an ability equivalent to what the average pupil reaches with European national languages after six to seven years of study, improves the ability of the pupil to learn a target language when compared to pupils who spent the entire time learning the target language. In other words, studying Esperanto for one year and then, say, French for three results in greater proficiency in French than studying French for four years. This effect was first described by Antoni Grabowski in 1908.

>> more info

A voyage of DNA, genes and the sea

2008-12-04T13:22:00.003+02:00

Genomics pioneer Craig Venter takes a break from his epic round-the-world expedition to talk about the millions of genes his team has discovered so far in its quest to map the ocean’s biodiversity.

>> watch

György Ligeti: Portrait, A Documentary by Michel Follin

2008-11-28T16:08:00.002+02:00

Runtime: 64mins

Language: French (no subtitles)

Réalisateur: Michel Follin

Auteurs: Judit Kele, Michel Follin, Arnaud de Mezamat

CoProduction: Abacaris Film, Artline Films, La Sept Arte, RTBF, Magyar

Televizio, Productions du Sablier, Centre Georges Pompidou

Grand Prix, Festival International du Film d’Art de Montréal (1994) Prix Sacem, Film de musique (1994)

The Hungarian composer György Ligeti's biography typifies the displaced cosmopolitan, truly at home only in the international community of music. Appropriately enough, this revealing film portrait of his life and music has a train journey as its central metaphor, with Ligeti gazing through the window onto the changing middle-European landscape. His music - innovative, complex, brilliantly eclectic - accompanies his reflections and memories.

>> download

Test Dancer

2008-11-26T12:18:00.002+02:00

This is a short performance piece made in collaboration with a dancer and a musician earlier this year, specifically for a Channel 4 commission.

The idea behind it was to construct an abstract study of movement.

Dancer: Emma Dunn

Music: Paul Keene

Camera & Edit: Nick Gibbon

Hauschka

2008-11-25T14:22:00.002+02:00

Hauschka

Hauschka is the alias of Düsseldorf-based pianist and composer, Volker Bertelmann.

Bertelmann's work is based upon an exploration of the possibilities of the prepared piano - a playfully disruptive intervention into the preconceived idea of the piano as a pure-toned, perfected instrument. Bertelmann explores and influences the outcome of his music by modifying parts of the instrument, attaching various objects to the strings to create a sound described as "a delicate, sometimes haunting form of experimental piano music". Hauschka's sound borrows as much from John Cage's same-titled prepared piano works and the historic predecessors of Les Six – namely Erik Satie.

>> http://www.hauschka-net.de