Anne Frank’s Amsterdam

Posted on June 13, 2012 by Brian D. Butler

On June 12, 1942 Anne Frank celebrated her 13th birthday in Amsterdam. Her parents gave her a diary with a red and white checkered cover.

“I hope I wll be able to confide everything to you, as I have never been able to confide in anyone, and I hope you will be a comfort and support.”

Yesterday marked Anne’s 83rd birthday and the 70th anniversary of the famous diary. Less than a month after her birthday, Anne and her family went into hiding in the secret annex along Amsterdam’s Prinsengracht canal.

The Anne Frank House museum has recently launched a marvelous mobile app called  Anne’s Amsterdam, which is an excellent tool for the exploration of Anne’s world and of World War II Amsterdam. The free app is available for iOs, Android and WP7.

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Rembrandt’s Facebook Timeline

Posted on June 12, 2012 by Brian D. Butler

Amsterdam‘s celebrated Rijksmuseum may be over 200 years-old, but it’s hip to 21st century social media marketing. The museum has cleverly “imagined” what Rembrandt’s Facebook Timeline would look like.

“I made a self-portrait. Let me know what you think!”

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It’s Alive !

Posted on June 11, 2012 by Brian D. Butler

Last week, the New York Public Library‘s Biblion: The Boundless Library digital series released a fantastic free iPad app based on Mary Shelley’s classic novel Frankenstein. The intuitive, interactive app features a treasure trove of materials from the NYPL’s Pforzheim Collection of Shelley and His Circle, along with a wealth of commentary by experts on the Romantic era,original source materials, photos, essays, artwork and dramatic audio readings. One of the best features ( from the bibliophile’s perspective) is the ability to toggle between copies of Mary Shelley’s original handwritten 1816 draft pages and the typeset version from the 1831 edition.

You can get the free app at iTunes. If you don’t have an iPad you can still access the Frankenstein app at the NYPL Biblion link above.

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Round the World by Chemin Vert

Posted on June 10, 2012 by Brian D. Butler

Rome-based artist/web designer/computer scientist Giacomo Miceli created this beautiful, mind-blowing little video trip across the globe and four seasons. The video titled Chemin Vert uses panoramic frames from Google Street View . There are even better versions of the video brewing on Miceli’s website. The musical accompaniment is by A Ghost Train.

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Ghosts of Pere Lachaise

Posted on June 9, 2012 by Brian D. Butler

Founded in 1804 in the countryside beyond the Paris city walls, the Cimetiére Pére-Lachaise is now Paris’ largest cemetery. Verdant, hilly, with meandering paths between thousands of sepulchral tombs and monuments this vast city of the dead is one of Paris’ top ten tourist attractions. Pére-Lachaise is best known to most foreign visitors as the final resting place of Jim Morrison, but ask a Parisian and they’re more likely to direct you to the evocative memorials for Marcel Proust, Edith Piaf, Honoré Balzac or Guillaume Apollinaire. Bibliophile visitors search out the graves of Gertrude Stein, Colette, Richard Wright and Oscar Wilde.

The fascination with Pére-Lachaise and its illustrious occupants has inspired writers and artists for two centuries. Now animators Antoine Colomb and Guillaume Rio have created the Tim Burton-esque short animated film, The Ghosts of Pére-Lachaise, celebrating another of the renowned residents, Chopin.

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Literary Journeys

Posted on June 8, 2012 by Brian D. Butler

You may know artist Owen Smith’s work from his numerous New Yorker magazine covers or his wonderful mosaic murals. His latest project is a fantastic set of transit posters for San Francisco’s BART system.

The series “Literary Journeys” depicts BART riders immersed in books by Dashiell Hammett, Jack London and Amy Tan, with scenes from the novels coming alive in the readers’ imaginations.

You can discover more about “Literary Journeys” and Smith’s other projects on his website.

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Buy a book, Win a DeLorean

Posted on June 7, 2012 by Brian D. Butler

To celebrate the release of the trade paperback edition of his novel Ready Player One, author Ernest Cline has created an original strategy to increase sales. The novelist is holding a contest inspired by the plot of his book. He has hidden an “Easter egg” in the form of a secret web address in the text of the book. If readers discover the hidden clue, it will lead to the first of three video game inspired challenges. The first reader to complete the triad of challenges will win a genuine 1981 DeLorian. For more info visit Cline’s contest website.

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What’s In a Cover

Posted on June 6, 2012 by Brian D. Butler

The self-described “goons’ at the comedy website Something Awful periodically post a series of humorous re-imagined bookcovers from classic titles. While they range from cringe-worthy to hilarious, they’re worth a peek. Here’s a sample, but check-out the site for more “Photoshop Phriday Cut-rate Books!”.

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Try This With An Ebook

Posted on June 5, 2012 by Brian D. Butler

San Francisco-based sculptor and installation artist Alexis Arnold has a unique approach to the exploration of nature and time on common objects. Arnold transforms books and magazines into mysterious crystaline forms using borax crystals, water and time.For the artist, “The crystal growth highlights or creates the aesthetic of these once-utilitarian objects that are entering the world of obsolescence.”

All photos © Alexis Arnold

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Bookyard

Posted on June 4, 2012 by Brian D. Butler

Tuscan-born artist Massimo Bartolini has created a charming plein air library for this year’s Track festival in beautiful Ghent, Belgium. Bartolini’s instatallation, Bookyard, is a series of 12 long bookshelves set in the vinyard of the medieval Sint-Pieters Abbey in the heart of Ghent.

The shelves are filled with donated books, which are all for sale to benefit libraries in Ghent and Antwerp. Bookyard will be up until September 16, 2012. Having once spent a long, wet weekend in Ghent, I am concerned about the state of the books after a few weeks in the Flanders damp.

Bookyard is just one of the marvelous pieces from this year’s event. Track: a contemporary city conversation is an annual art experience in public and semi-public spaces around the ancient city of Ghent. More than forty artist are invited each year to create new works that are “rooted in the urban fabric of Ghent”.

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