What I’m always doing, both in music and in light art, is trying to make something that I wish existed.
(As artist Austin Kleon put it in his 10-point manifesto for art, “Write the book you want to read.”)
Lovely short film about the visual art of music pioneer Brian Eno from Red Bull Music Academy and m ss ng p eces. Complement with Eno on art, in timeless insights from his diary.
At the American Academy in Rome, filmmaker Nicholas Heller follows Visiting Artist Ann Weber on her daily rounds, scavenging cardboard boxes out of dumpsters, collecting ideas from architectural details and Bernini sculptures and creating sculpture in her studio.
You want to slow the spread of AIDS? Educate a girl. You want to slow population growth? Educate a girl. You want to grow the global economy? Educate a girl. So, what exactly changes when the 600,000 girls in the developing world get a good education?
Everything.
Some stirring statistics in this trailer for Girl Rising, a moving documentary about the impact of educating girls worldwide.
At a time when even in the “developed” world the gender gap in academia gapes wide, what could be more important? Even Einstein knew that.
Help support the project with a donation – for the cost of an average New York City dinner, for instance, you can cover the school feels for one girl for an entire year.
It reminds me of the structure of the universe. It’s kind of the same with society — there’s different atoms, people, different individuals that are all there for their own reason, that all do their own thing, but ultimately, when you put them all together, you end up with a system. As anything that emerges, it will depend on what we do with it.
Wonderful short documentary on online communities, where, just like in the physical world, we are all stardust.
At 200 meters, we leave the Photic Zone and enter the first layer of the deep sea – the Twilight Zone. At this depth, there’s less than 1% of the sunlight at the surface, the pressure has increased twentyfold, and the temperature has dropped to 4º — but we find a world of extraordinary beauty.
Oh, amazing planet. Mesmerizing excerpt from BBC’s The Deep Sea.
(↬ Doobybrain)
“There is degenerate people that play chess, there is MIT graduates that play chess … people from every walk of life play chess.” ~ Alfred
Lovely short documentary on the subcultures of chess in NYC.
“Everybody can exist — but to live and to thrive, you have to have a plan.” ~ Alfred
(↬ Doobybrain)
34 degrees 24 minutes 19 seconds South
53 degrees, 46 minutes 40 seconds West
The story of Leonardo Da Costa, a lighthouse keeper stationed in Cabo Polonio, a remote cape in a stretch of Uruguayan
Return Of The Sun – breathtaking portrait of a modern Inuit family
I’m also drawing inspiration from newspaper headlines and anecdotes that I hear and things that I see at the supermarket.
In this wonderful short film, writer Dan Chaon adds to our ongoing archive of wisdom on writing, speaking to the combinatorial nature of creativity and recounting his warm memories of Ray Bradbury’s generous spirit.
Lovely short film about artist Scott Lenhardt’s Twenty Four Hour Woman, a quirky, light-hearted illustrated calendar exploring what it means to be a woman in 2013.
Wonderful short documentary about the future of interaction design from Bassett & Partners.
Wonderful short film about NASA’s Dawn mission, narrated by Leonard Nimoy.
George Orwell: A Life in Pictures – fascinating documentary about the iconic author, available online in its entirety.
“Graphic design is essentially a language for living.”
Wonderful PBS short documentary on the art of graphic design, featuring the brilliant Debbie Millman.
Complement with the 10 best graphic design books of 2012.
Previous Off Book episodes have covered typography, product design, art in the age of the internet, book art and papercraft, generative art, the explosion of animated GIFs, LEGO art, the art of film and TV title design, the culture of Reddit, technologies that allow us to see beyond the human eye, logo design, the art of motion graphics and animation, and journalism in the age of Twitter.
