Terrific full-length video from Air-Clips.com
Category Archives: Documentary
“Stuff Happened Anyway”: Paula Scher on design
Gary Hustwit’s Helvetica subtly did more than examine the ubiquitous font. Most of us would like to be designers in the same way we’d like to be athletes or musicians and we’re interested in those who do it well. Hustwit tapped into that need and let several prominent figures from that world have free rein to discuss what they see and how they see it. Elegant Paula Scher and twitchy Erik Spiekermann come off well, others sound like prats best avoided.
Scher has looked at information design and presentation with the artist’s eye, quite different from, say, an Edward Tufte. Her perspective, driven by artistic and marketing concerns, are at once intriguing and disturbing. She stretches and distorts to make larger points such as claiming that Helvetica was the font of the Vietnam and Iraq wars. It’s not a literal accusation, only that it is the kind of calming gloss that corporations and governments use to disguise their little murders. But, she also cops to fabricating the data she’s (re)presenting to make her point. I admire a lot of her work; it is bold, brash, and political. I don’t know whether I would enjoy living, working, or studying in something so shouty. Nevertheless, I’ve got my autosearches configured to let me know if she’s ever speaking within a couple of hours of LA.
Several of her other lectures are on the web and worth a look. Scher sounds like the canonical good seatmate on a long flight. I doubt she travels coach, though.
Hustwit’s films Helvetica, Objectified, and Urbanized. are available for affordable digital download from his website, $5.99/ea.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jz9SvnhlhUg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlR4ez8B0E0
Illuminated Manuscripts: SFSO explains ‘Eroica’
The San Francisco Symphony set a high standard for musical education with ‘Keeping Score,’ an interactive immersion into great music and composers. Each episode features performance excerpts, scrolling score with annotations, and a wealth of historical context. There’s also a lot of MTT. All done with the technology and bandwidth available in 2006 and still unequaled. Click the image and dive headlong into the Eroica.
Then try Mahler, Berlioz, Ives, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Copland, and Tchaikovsky.
Backyard Treasures: Western Museum of Flight’s speaker series
Who knew that The Western Museum of Flight has a speaker series and that the Peninsula Seniors have made many of these talks available for all to see? I routinely search for things like this and last night stumbled across these by accident. Aircraft buffs owe both organizations a big vote of thanks. And, there are plenty more gems where these came from.
One chain of craftsmanship – The SX-70 via Charles and Ray Eames
Final comment by Philip Morrison. Music by Elmer Bernstein.
The J-58 made simple(r)
I got a copy of the SR-71 Pilot’s Manual as soon as it became available in the early 1990s. It’s a throwback to the days of slide rules and handmade graphics and utterly fascinating. There is a lot of material on the Pratt and Whitney J-58 engine and the Lockheed inlets that powered the Blackbird beyond Mach 3 yet I have never been able to fully understand why and how that system did what it did. Thankfully, Blackbird enthusiast Tech Adams explains it all in his delightful video – The Mighty J58 – The SR-71’s Secret Powerhouse.
Genius without compromise – Perelman and the shape of the universe
An absorbing and slightly frustrating look at famed mathematician and now recluse, Grigori Perelman. His solution of the Poincare conjecture earned him a Fields Medal and a Clay Millennium prize – both of which he declined on principle.
Superb insights on the man and his impact from other leading lights in the field and frustrating given the large amounts of irrelevant stock footage of random happenings at assorted universities.
Sylvia Nasar and David Gruber’s controversial New Yorker article on the politics underlying the purest of pure math, ‘Manifold Destiny’ makes for equally fascinating reading.
(In Russian with English captions)
Ring around the planet – A decade of Cassini
Dr. Carolyn Porco of the Cassini Imaging Team presents highlights of the probe’s ten years at Saturn following a long journey to get there. Video of the talk at Berkeley’s Sackler Lecture in Astronomy.
I know nothing about jazz…
…but I know I like this.
SpeedbirdHD’s year-in-review is released
LAX comings and goings in 2014 as only the mysterious SpeedbirdHD can do it.