Watch this beautiful, short, animated film by Julia Pott, Belly, which has already won a slew of awards. If you like the animation and out-of-this-world story-line of Belly, try watching the works of Atsushi Wada.
![“[Van] Cliburn was such a perfectionist and so critical of his own work that after a concert he would console himself by vowing to play those pieces again, after more practice, to improve his performance. He only bowed for applause out of gratitude that somebody was clapping.”
The above drawing and blurb are by our Artist-in-Residence, Flash Rosenberg. She sits at a drawing station during most of our programs and draws the conversations LIVE, then turns them into Conversation Portraits. For instance, she illustrated our May 15 program with Van Cliburn, who is celebrating his 78th birthday today! See more of Flash’s drawings from the evening here… and watch/listen to the full program here…](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m722sfcyFv1r1te77o1_500.jpg)
“[Van] Cliburn was such a perfectionist and so critical of his own work that after a concert he would console himself by vowing to play those pieces again, after more practice, to improve his performance. He only bowed for applause out of gratitude that somebody was clapping.”
The above drawing and blurb are by our Artist-in-Residence, Flash Rosenberg. She sits at a drawing station during most of our programs and draws the conversations LIVE, then turns them into Conversation Portraits. For instance, she illustrated our May 15 program with Van Cliburn, who is celebrating his 78th birthday today! See more of Flash’s drawings from the evening here… and watch/listen to the full program here…
![WILLIAM KENTRIDGE: I’ll tell you a story. A German scientist, Felix Eberty, had come to understand that the speed of light had a fixed speed and wasn’t instantaneous, and he worked out that everything that had been seen on earth was moving out from earth at the speed of light, so instead of having space as a vacuum, he described it as suffused with images of everything that had happened on earth. You would just have to be at the right distance from earth to be at the right moment to see what had happened in the archive—to see anything that had happened—so if you had to start 2000 light years away, in his terms you could see the crucifixion. If you were 500 light years away, you could see Dürer making his Melancholia print, which is 500 years old now.
I was intrigued with the idea of space full of this archive of images that was spreading out. I thought of that in terms of a ceiling projection with all these images…[But] it was jettisoned because it was very complicated in terms of the physical projection. How would you see it? Would everybody have mirrors to look at the ceiling to look from down below (which I had done before)? At one stage we had a whole Room of Failures, which was all the things that didn’t work, which we still could have done.—from “Death, Time, Soup: A Conversation with William Kentridge and Peter Galison” by Margaret K. Koerner
Kentridge came to LIVE in March of 2010 on the occasion of his Metropolitan Opera directing debut for Shostakovich’s The Nose. Watch this Conversation Portrait from the evening by our Artist-in-Residence, Flash Rosenberg, aptly titled, “Learning from the Absurd”.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m6peg5b6o51r1te77o1_250.jpg)
WILLIAM KENTRIDGE: I’ll tell you a story. A German scientist, Felix Eberty, had come to understand that the speed of light had a fixed speed and wasn’t instantaneous, and he worked out that everything that had been seen on earth was moving out from earth at the speed of light, so instead of having space as a vacuum, he described it as suffused with images of everything that had happened on earth. You would just have to be at the right distance from earth to be at the right moment to see what had happened in the archive—to see anything that had happened—so if you had to start 2000 light years away, in his terms you could see the crucifixion. If you were 500 light years away, you could see Dürer making his Melancholia print, which is 500 years old now.
I was intrigued with the idea of space full of this archive of images that was spreading out. I thought of that in terms of a ceiling projection with all these images…[But] it was jettisoned because it was very complicated in terms of the physical projection. How would you see it? Would everybody have mirrors to look at the ceiling to look from down below (which I had done before)? At one stage we had a whole Room of Failures, which was all the things that didn’t work, which we still could have done.
—from “Death, Time, Soup: A Conversation with William Kentridge and Peter Galison” by Margaret K. Koerner
Kentridge came to LIVE in March of 2010 on the occasion of his Metropolitan Opera directing debut for Shostakovich’s The Nose. Watch this Conversation Portrait from the evening by our Artist-in-Residence, Flash Rosenberg, aptly titled, “Learning from the Absurd”.
His mother’s lessons
Van Cliburn’s mother told him, “Don’t beat the piano. Caress the keys. Listen for the eye of the sound.” Like a storm, each note has an eye – the still center around which all its sound and vibration revolves.
One of thirteen slides by LIVE artist-in-residence Flash Rosenberg from our May 15 event with Van Cliburn. Flash draws our programs as they’re happening, creating conversation portraits. See the whole set here… and her final animations here…
Happy Friday the 13th! To celebrate this spooky day, how about you take a look at this Conversation Portrait by LIVE’s Artist-in-Residence Flash Rosenberg from our 2008 program, “LIVE from the NYPL presents Dead from the NYPL: The Perverse Pleasure of Obituaries”.
Drawing by the NYPL’s Artist in Residence, Flash Rosenberg, from LIVE’s awesome, informative show with Stacy Schiff and Amanda Foreman about Cleopatra: A Life. Flash creates Conversation Portraits, which are makeshift animations…sort of a slice of her brain while listening to a program. Check out this one from our William Kentridge event and keep an eye out for Cleopatra in the future!
Yoni Goodman used to do these crazy daily animations on his aptly titled blog Dailymation. They’re addicting once you begin watching! Goodman was the animation director for the breathtaking film Waltz with Bashir. The writer, producer and director of the film Ari Folman sat down with Reza Aslan, writer of How to Win a Cosmic War, in April of 2009 for an intense, incredibly relevant talk.
