UbuWeb

Consisting of literally thousands of films, videos, sound files, and digitized papers, UbuWeb is a treasure trove of multi-media art. The material is presented freely for noncommercial, educational use. It is easily searchable, often has a short description, and is continually updated.

So, if you’re looking for examples of early Vito Acconci videos, recent work by Matthew Barney, the music of John Cage, or PDFs of the journal “Internationale Situationniste,” UbuWeb is a great resource to find these often esoteric works.

The site has also recently announced that all films are now available to view on mobile device.

ICFA’s 16mm Film Collection Online

The Image Collections and Fieldwork Archives at Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection in Washington, D.C. recently digitized fourteen 16mm films from its collection. The 14 films include footage of the Dumbarton Oaks grounds from the mid-1920s to the 1940s, as well as films made by the Byzantine Institute during the 1930s and 1940s that document conservation efforts on site at the Red Sea Monastery of Saint Anthony (Egypt), Hagia Sophia (Istanbul), and Kariye Camii (Istanbul). Several of the films are in color, giving viewers a chance to see “the process of cleaning, restoration, and preservation in great detail, as well as the quality and visual impression of the mosaics in their most shining state.”

The digitized films have been made available through the video streaming service Vimeo, and can be embedded into websites.

For more information, explore the Moving Image Collection at Dumbarton Oaks and the collection accompanying archival materials in The Byzantine Institute and Dumbarton Oaks Fieldwork Records and Papers.

Via ICFA Blog

The Public Domain Review

The Public Domain Review (a project of the Open Knowledge Foundation) is a great resource that highlights a variety of digitized public domain resources and curated collections, including images, film, text, and audio. In addition, there are scholarly articles from various humanities disciplines that engage with the digital materials included on the site.

The Public Domain Review is a not-for-profit project dedicated to showcasing the most interesting and unusual out-of-copyright works available online.

All works eventually fall out of copyright – from classic works of art, music and literature, to abandoned drafts, tentative plans, and overlooked fragments. In doing so they enter the public domain, a vast commons of material that everyone is free to enjoy, share and build upon without restriction.

We believe the public domain is an invaluable and indispensable good, which – like our natural environment and our physical heritage – deserves to be explicitly recognised, protected and appreciated.

The Public Domain Review aims to help its readers to explore this rich terrain – like a small exhibition gallery at the entrance of an immense network of archives and storage rooms that lie beyond.

The PDR also has a thorough guide to finding interesting public domain works online. Collaborators include the Internet Archive, Europa, the Library of Congress, the Field Museum, the Boston Public Library, the California Digital Library, the Smithsonian Institution, the Getty, and more.

For more information, visit the Public Domain Review.

Online Video Channel for Art and Design: ARTtube

ARTtube is the online video channel for art and design by museums in the Netherlands and Belgium.

The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, M HKA in Antwerp, Gemeentemuseum The Hague, De Pont in Tilburg and Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam will now be publishing videos on ARTtube about art and design. The videos, which are all in high quality, will generally be produced by the museums themselves, based on their own expertise.

ARTtube includes exceptional interviews with reputable artists and designers, plus fascinating portraits of inspirational makers. The museums offer a peep behind the scenes – for example, setting up an exhibition or restoring works of art…

For more information, see ARTtube’s introductory video.

Cinema Image Gallery Database Trial

The University of Chicago now has trial access to Cinema Image Gallery, an EBSCO database featuring pictures, posters, video clips, film stills and other materials from the world of moving images, starting in the late 19th century and continuing to present day.

Cinema Image Gallery presents the history of moviemaking, as well as up-to-the-minute content from recent releases, and an extensive collection of television stills.

Content Includes:

  • More than 217,000 superior-quality images
  • A treasure trove of more than 6,200 posters and lobby cards used to promote movies
  • Links to 160 full movies, and to biographical materials about notable figures in the industry
  • Portrait photography and biographies of the stars of film and television
  • Database-specific search parameters developed specifically for this resource—Title, Director, Actor Names, Genre, Awards (Academy Award, Cannes Film Festival, Screen Actors Guild)—to ensure accuracy and speed in locating relevant material

Access the trial on-campus here. Let us know what you think in the comments!

Performance Art Broadcast Online

BMW Tate Live: Performance Room is an innovative series of performances broadcast… online around the globe, as they happen.

The global audience [is] encouraged to chat with other viewers via social media channels during the performance and to put questions to the artists or curator… using Tate’s social media channels on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube and the Twitter hashtag #BMWTateLive.

US residents, enter the BMW Tate Live: Performance Room via Tate’s YouTube channel at 3pm on the designated dates below to experience the performances in real time. Artists who will perform include: Pablo Bronstein (April 26), Emily Roysdon (May 31), Harrell Fletcher (June 28), and Joan Jonas (date TBD).

Via Derivative Image.

“Leonardo Live” at the Music Box Theatre

Leonardo Live documents the exhibition “Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan,” on view and sold out at the U.K. National Gallery. The film will be shown at Chicago’s Music Box Theatre, opening on March 14th at 7pm.

After limited screenings in the UK in November 2011, an expanded presentation of LEONARDO LIVE featuring bonus content will be available at movie theaters around the world, in limited screenings only. Captured live on the eve of the exhibition opening in London this fall, LEONARDO LIVE will provide a high-definition walk-through of the landmark exhibition, in-depth commentary about featured pieces in the exhibit and extra content.

To buy advance tickets or to see a preview, click here.

New Image and Media Database Trials

University of Chicago users now have trial access to the Paley Center for Media iCollection until February 28th. Please contact us for login information. The iCollection includes 15,000+ programs from the Paley Center’s collection. They are adding hundreds of new radio and television programs and advertisements each week as the collection is digitized.

The Prometheus Image Archive is also available to University of Chicago users on a trial basis until March 7th. See “Campus Login” at left and accept the Terms of Use for access.

prometheus is a digital image archive for Art and Cultural Sciences. prometheus allows for the convenient search for images on a common user interface within different image archives, variable databases from institutes, research facilities and museums.

Please send feedback about these databases to the Visual Resources Center or to Nancy Spiegel, Bibliographer for Art and Cinema at Regenstein Library.

NYPL Labs: Stereogranimator

NYPL Labs is proud to bring you the Stereogranimator, a tool for transforming historical stereographs from The New York Public Library’s vast collections into shareable 3D web formats. This site is all about your participation, so have fun with it, experiment with it, and let us know how we can improve it. In fact, this project wouldn’t even exist if it hadn’t been for a user like yourself getting creative with library collections. Here’s the story of how that happened…