All Things Visual: The University of Chicago Visual Resources Center

The Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) has received two major grants from the NEA and Getty Foundation that will be used to create the SCI-Arc Digital Lecture Archive.

This free web archive will contain more than 1,000 hours of key architectural and design lectures and symposia from 1974 to the present that will be accessible online, via phone applications, e-readers, and other new media channels… The SCI-Arc Digital Lecture Archive will provide access to never before seen footage of some of the most influential leaders in architecture and design, including Frank O. Gehry, Zaha Hadid, David Hockney, Rem Koolhaas, John Lautner, Thom Mayne, Eric Owen Moss, Kazuyo Sejima, and many more… Scheduled to be launched in 2012—coinciding with SCI-Arc’s 40th anniversary—the SCI-Arc Digital Lecture Archive will feature a sophisticated search engine that will allow access to both entire lectures as well as specific segments of each lecture, placing the school’s significant archive at one’s fingertips.

Via Archinet.

This week PBS aired a new episode of their television program Secrets of the Dead in which producer Steve Talley explores the life-sized terracotta warriors of China:

This clay army of 8,000 including infantry, archers, generals and cavalry was discovered by archaeologists in 1974 after farmers digging a well near the Chinese city of Xian unearthed pieces of clay sculpted in human form.

An amazing archaeological find, the terracotta warriors date back more than two thousand years. But what was the purpose of this army of clay soldiers? Who ordered its construction? How were they created? Secrets of the Dead investigates the story behind China’s Terracotta Warriors and documents their return to former glory for the first time.

The episode is now available online.

Many of us have heard recent revelations about the kinds of geographic information stored on our mobile devices, including iPhones and iPads. On the lighter side of location tracking, some artists are using this kind of data to create art based on people’s movements and interactions. One such example is Maria Scileppi’s Living Brushstroke project. Her video Anthem includes visualizations from events like Burning Man and the 2010 Chicago Marathon. According to the project’s blog, a Living Brushstroke iPhone app will be available soon.

Via O’Reilly Radar.

Awhile back we blogged about ArtBabble, a website created by staff at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. The site showcases art content in high-quality video format from a variety of sources and perspectives. Since our last blog post, ArtBabble has partnered with many more institutions including the Art Institute of Chicago and, most recently, the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Click on the image above to watch a video documenting the installation of Catherine Opie’s photographic series Surfers and Icehouses, brought to ArtBabble by the Guggenheim.

Recently Smarthistory.org launched a fundraising campaign using Kickstarter. The goal? To raise $10,000 to fund 100 new art history videos as a free alternative to the traditional and very expensive art history textbook.

For more information or to donate to the project, click here.

via Open Culture.

All four episodes of John Berger’s Ways of Seeing are available on UbuWeb:

Ways of Seeing was a BBC television series consisting of visual essays that raise questions about hidden ideologies in visual images. The series gave rise to a later book of the same name written by John Berger.

About UbuWeb:

UbuWeb is a completely independent resource dedicated to all strains of the avant-garde, ethnopoetics, and outsider arts. All materials on UbuWeb are being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights belong to the author(s). UbuWeb is completely free.

PBS recently introduced a beta version of its new arts website which covers theater, dance, visual art, film and music. Four virtual exhibitions are among the site’s initial offerings; one of these, called Ruin & Revival, explores creativity in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. It includes works from the series “Storm Cycle” by artist Thomas Mann.

Another area of the website encourages viewers to contribute digital photographs of artwork to the PBS Arts Flickr group and tag works with keywords, grouping them into collaborative virtual exhibitions.

Early silent films recently discovered in the New Zealand Film Archive are returning to the United States for preservation under the guidance of the National Film Preservation Foundation. About seventy-five films were chosen because of their historical significance, including John Ford’s Upstream and a Clara Bow period drama. Shipment and preservation of the films has been difficult and time-consuming; most are printed on highly-flammable nitrate film and are already in advanced stages of deterioration. Preserved films will eventually be made public as streaming videos on the foundation’s website. For more information, see this article from the New York Times.

Neshat uses various visual mediums to create artwork that, at its core, represents the resilient and rebellious spirit of women.

Iranian-American visual artist Shirin Neshat was featured on yesterday’s National Public Radio broadcast of All Things Considered. Neshat’s new film, Zanan-e bedun-e mardan (Women Without Men) is now in theaters across the United States, and the artist’s eponymous new book was also recently released with a foreword by Marina Abramovic.

The Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) has developed a new platform for its online journal. The online version of the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historials (JSAH) will support video, dynamic images, virtual modeling, and digital mapping. JSAH Online will only be available to SAH members during 2010, with independent subscriptions beginning in 2011. A sample article showing some of the journal’s capabilities is currently online. See Inside Higher Ed for more information.