BoredReading

Agency and contribution

4 weeks ago

from Seth's Blog in creative

What’s possible and what’s required? It’s still surprising to me that some of these ideas aren’t widely held, because they seem so clear to me: Skill...

Tomorrow Never Knows: How The Beatles Invented the Future With Studio Magic, Tape Loops & LSD

4 weeks ago

from Open Culture in creative

“Tomorrow Never Dies” couldn’t be made today, and not just because the Beatles already made it in 1966. Marking perhaps the single biggest step in the...

Meet The Maker: Ben Goodman

4 weeks ago

from Handprinted - Blog in creative

Hello. I’m a wood engraver and printmaker who specialises in portraiture. I work from my studio in South Bristol where I’m lucky enough to have an old...

Publicity or public relations?

a month ago

from Seth's Blog in creative

Publicity is the hard work of getting media outlets and social media influencers to talk about you. Hustle for attention and mentions. Public...

The Invisible Horror of The Shining: How Music Makes Stanley Kubrick’s Iconic Film Even More Terrifying

a month ago

from Open Culture in creative

Inexplicable as it may sound to readers of this site, there are movie-lovers who claim not to enjoy the work of Stanley Kubrick. But even his most...

The future doesn’t care

a month ago

from Seth's Blog in creative

It doesn’t care whether you’re excited or filled with trepidation. It arrives, regardless. What an opportunity. Or a threat. Up to us.

Watch Animated Sheet Music for Miles Davis’ “So What,” Coltrane’s “Giant Steps,” and Charlie Parker’s “Confirmation”

a month ago

from Open Culture in creative

Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue changed jazz. It changed music, period. So I take it very seriously. But when I see the animated sheet music of the first...

Not smart vs. stupid

a month ago

from Seth's Blog in creative

Not smart is a passive act, remedied with learning, experience and thought. Stupid is active, the work of someone who should have or could have known...

J. R. R. Tolkien Reads from The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings & Other Works

a month ago

from Open Culture in creative

If you wanted to hear the voice of your favorite writer in the nineteen-sixties — a time before audiobooks, let alone podcasts — you consulted the...

Three choices

a month ago

from Seth's Blog in creative

Everything flows from the strategic decisions we make early in the process: Choose your landlord. The rent is due every month. The place we set up...

Igor Stravinsky’s “Illegal” Arrangement of “The Star Spangled Banner” (1944)

a month ago

from Open Culture in creative

In 1939, Igor Stravinsky emigrated to the United States, first arriving in New York City, before settling in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he...

Digital editions on big sale

a month ago

from Seth's Blog in creative

As many of my readers get ready for a long weekend, here are two of my books now on discount at Amazon–for another few days. This is Strategy is 90%...

Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intelligent Person Should Read

a month ago

from Open Culture in creative

Image via Wikimedia Commons A number of years ago, a Reddit user posed the question to Neil deGrasse Tyson: “Which books should be read by every...

Using a Mylar Mask to Reduce Chatter in a Linocut

a month ago

from Handprinted - Blog in creative

One of the problems to overcome when printing a linocut is ink being picked up by the carved away areas of the block. These lines print onto the paper...

Productivity, AI and pushback

a month ago

from Seth's Blog in creative

Typesetters did not like the laser printer. Wedding photographers still hate the iphone. And some musicians are outraged that AI is now making...

The Only Painting van Gogh Ever Sold: Discover The Red Vineyard (1888)

a month ago

from Open Culture in creative

It may have crossed your mind, while beholding paintings of Vincent van Gogh, that you’d like to own one yourself someday. If so, you’ll have to get...

Versions of reality

a month ago

from Seth's Blog in creative

A sea slug sees far more colors than you do, and you probably see more than a profoundly color-blind person. Who’s right? We each carry our own...

Iconic Animator Chuck Jones Creates an Oscar-Winning Animation About the Virtues of Universal Health Care (1949)

a month ago

from Open Culture in creative

While our country looks like it might be coming apart at the seams, it’s good to revisit, every once in a while, moments when it did work. And that’s...

Daydream fatigue

a month ago

from Seth's Blog in creative

Spend enough time inventing possible futures in your head and you won’t have any time to build the future we will all share. Time to get to work.

A Visualization of the History of Technology: 1,889 Innovations Across Three Million Years

a month ago

from Open Culture in creative

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” So holds the third and most famous of the “three laws” originally articulated...

A billion choices

a month ago

from Seth's Blog in creative

Game theory has a lousy name. When most people think of games, they think of commercial stuff for kids, like Chutes and Ladders or possibly Monopoly....

Hear the World’s Oldest Instrument, the “Neanderthal Flute,” Dating Back Over 43,000 Years

a month ago

from Open Culture in creative

Several years ago, we brought you a transcription and a couple of audio interpretations of the oldest known song in the world, discovered in the...

Use a lot of words

a month ago

from Seth's Blog in creative

Verbosity is the new brevity. Google felt like a miracle. We could type just a word or two (“blog“) and it would magically guess what we wanted and...

Watch the Very First YouTube Video, “Me at the Zoo,” Now 20 Years Old

a month ago

from Open Culture in creative

Given the dominance YouTube has achieved over large swathes of world culture, we’d all expect to remember the first video we watched there. Yet many...

Meet The Maker: Corinne Mangan

a month ago

from Handprinted - Blog in creative

Hello, I’m Corinne Mangan and I live and work in the beautiful Surrey Hills where I find most of my inspiration; I’m currently an Artist in Residence...

Hard to predict

a month ago

from Seth's Blog in creative

The outcome of our work can be easy or difficult to predict. It’s not hard to determine if a bridge is going to fall down or if code is going to...

Why Bob Dylan’s Unreleased “Blind Willie McTell” Is Now Considered a Masterpiece

a month ago

from Open Culture in creative

Most Dylanologists disagree about which is the single greatest song in Bob Dylan’s catalog, but few would deny “Blind Willie McTell” a place high in...

And when it breaks?

a month ago

from Seth's Blog in creative

Most of the pitch and the demo is all about how terrific our plans are, and how well our gadget works. But if we hope for resilience, perhaps it makes...

How Scientists Recreated Ancient Egypt’s Long-Lost Pigment, “Egyptian Blue”

a month ago

from Open Culture in creative

Photo courtesy of Washington State University. It’s become fashionable, in recent years, to observe that we live in an increasingly beige-and-gray...

Big scale, big impact

a month ago

from Seth's Blog in creative

The Beatles changed music. Starbucks changed coffee. Perhaps your project is aiming to reach a large audience. Consultants call it market share. What...

How Art Conservators Restore Old Paintings & Revive Their Original Colors

a month ago

from Open Culture in creative

We tend to imagine old paintings as having a muted, yellow-brown cast, and not without reason. Many of the examples we’ve seen in life really do look...

Perfect

a month ago

from Seth's Blog in creative

Nothing is perfect… But everything can get better. There’s never enough time… But there’s time enough to make a difference. Someone will always be...

When the Dutch Tried to Live in Concrete Spheres: An Introduction to the Bolwoningen in the Netherlands

a month ago

from Open Culture in creative

In the decades after the Second World War, many countries faced the challenge of rebuilding their housing and infrastructure while also having to...

Remembering toward better

a month ago

from Seth's Blog in creative

We don’t get a chance to do yesterday over again. The best reason to think about the past is because it gives us the opportunity to improve the...

Enter an Archive of 10,000+ Historical Children’s Books, All Digitized & Free to Read Online

a month ago

from Open Culture in creative

We can learn much about how a historical period viewed the abilities of its children by studying its children’s literature. Occupying a space...

How Much Detail on Exposed Screens?

a month ago

from Handprinted - Blog in creative

When designing artwork for exposed screens it can be very difficult to figure out what level of detail you can include. Different mesh counts will be...

Watch Bob Dylan Play “Mr. Tambourine Man” in Color at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival

a month ago

from Open Culture in creative

It was at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival that Bob Dylan famously “went electric,” alienating certain adherents to the folk scene through which he’d...

Here to please

a month ago

from Seth's Blog in creative

Please who? If you’re on a social media network, are you seeking to optimize for the algorithm, the owners of the tech stock or your personal goals?...

Tibetan Musical Notation Is Beautiful

a month ago

from Open Culture in creative

Religions take the cast and hue of the cultures in which they find root. This was certainly true in Tibet when Buddhism arrived in the 7th century. It...

“I made a mistake”

a month ago

from Seth's Blog in creative

This sits right next to, “I made a bad decision,” in things that are hard to say. But there are many moments when we’re confused about what actually...

A Grad Student Asks Carl Sagan If He Believes in God (1994)

a month ago

from Open Culture in creative

?si=yeo1Xsu2ZLuCpQbC Most scientists are prepared to answer questions about their research from other members of their field; rather fewer have...

Orange cars

a month ago

from Seth's Blog in creative

In a given neighborhood, just about all the cars are the same. There are few that are pink, orange or purple, for example. There’s nothing inherently...

How Jackson Pollock Redefined Modern Art: An Introduction

a month ago

from Open Culture in creative

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sQ_cfZ8q9kVideo can’t be loaded because JavaScript is disabled: Jackson Pollock: the Myth of the Modern Artist...

The power of a pause

a month ago

from Seth's Blog in creative

The single-most effective way to invest 90 seconds a day is simple (and difficult). 18 times a day, when you’re about to offer advice, ask a question...

The Genius of Brian Wilson (RIP) and How He Turned “Good Vibrations” Into the Beach Boys’ Pocket Symphony

a month ago

from Open Culture in creative

This week, Brian Wilson became the last of the Wilson brothers to shuffle off this mortal coil. Dennis, the first of the Wilsons to go, died young in...

Status (and the grass tax)

a month ago

from Seth's Blog in creative

Status shows up whenever humans do, and it is the invisible underpinning of our culture. The front lawn was only invented around the time of Columbus....

An Architectural Tour of Taliesin West, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Iconic Desert Home and Studio

a month ago

from Open Culture in creative

By some estimations, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West home-studio complex took shape in 1941. But even then, the Arizona Republic presciently noted...

Meet The Maker: Holly Nairn

a month ago

from Handprinted - Blog in creative

Hello! My name is Holly Nairn and I am a full time Art teacher in Hertfordshire, a job I absolutely love. I work under the name PaperInkDream and I...

Ecosystems come and go

a month ago

from Seth's Blog in creative

Your project doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Your company wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the customers, competitors, marketplaces, systems and tech that...

Every Wes Anderson Movie, Explained by Wes Anderson

a month ago

from Open Culture in creative

That Wes Anderson is perhaps the most assiduous maker of short films today becomes clear when you look closely at his recent work. The four...