Animation brings 2500-year-old vase to life

Oxford academics have teamed-up with an animator to bring ancient Greek vase scenes to life.

The images on this 2,500-year-old vase have been animated to show what life was like in ancient Greece.

The Classics in Communities project, which is led by Mai Musié of Oxford University to encourage the teaching of ancient languages like Latin and Greek, has teamed up with the Panoply Vase Animation Project following an award from the Oxford University Knowledge Exchange Fund.

The animation is freely available to watch online, and its creators hope it is used by teachers and lecturers to support their teaching of topics related to ancient Greece.

'Our animation features a cup that would once have been used at ancient drinking parties 2,500 years ago,' says Dr Sonya Nevin, co-director of the Panoply Vase Animation Project.

How Libraries Save Lives

One woman’s story of how a bookmobile transported her away from a deadly life and toward her human potential.

“Knowledge sets us free, art sets us free. A great library is freedom,” Ursula K. Le Guin wrote in contemplating the sacredness of public libraries. “If librarians were honest, they would say, No one spends time here without being changed,” Joseph Mills wrote in his ode to libraries. “You never know what troubled little girl needs a book,” Nikki Giovanni wrote in one of her poems celebrating libraries and librarians.

A beautiful testament to that emancipating, transformative power of public libraries comes from one such troubled little girl named Storm Reyes, who grew up in an impoverished Native American community, had her life profoundly changed, perhaps even saved, by a library bookmobile, and went on to become a librarian herself. She tells her story in this wonderful oral history animation by StoryCorps:

The piece was adapted into an essay in Callings: The Purpose and Passion of Work(public library) — the collection of tender, touching, and deeply humane stories edited by StoryCorps founder Dave Isay that also gave us pioneering astronaut Ronald McNair, who perished in the Challenger disaster, remembered by his brother.

Why Shakespeare loved iambic pentameter

Shakespeare sometimes gets a bad rap in high schools for his complex plots and antiquated language. But a quick peek into the rhythm of his words reveals a poet deeply rooted in the way people spoke in his time — and still speak today. Why do Shakespeare’s words have such staying power? David T. Freeman and Gregory Taylor uncover the power of iambic pentameter.

Lesson by David T. Freeman and Gregory Taylor, animation by Brad Purnell.

Ways to Stop Bullying

Are you being bullied? Well, you're not the only one. In fact, studies show that one-third of all students are bullied every year!

Here you can watch a WellCast video which suggests a four step method that will show you how to boost your confidence, protect yourself from harm and find help.

 

 

How Repetition Enchants the Brain and the Psychology of Why We Love It in Music

“Music takes place in time, but repetition beguilingly makes it knowable in the way of something outside of time.”

“The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it’s a form of mesmerism,” Haruki Murakami reflected on the power of a daily routine. “Rhythm is one of the most powerful of pleasures, and when we feel a pleasurable rhythm we hope it will continue,” Mary Oliver wrote about the secret of great poetry, adding: “When it does, it grows sweeter.” But nowhere does rhythmic repetition mesmerize us more powerfully than in music, with its singular way of enchanting the brain.

How and why this happens is precisely what cognitive scientist Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis, director of the Music Cognition Lab at the University of Arkansas, explores in On Repeat: How Music Plays the Mind (public library). This illuminating short animation from TED Ed, based on Margulis’s work, explains the psychology of the “mere exposure effect,” which makes things grow sweeter simply as they become familiar — a parallel manifestation of the same psychological phenomenon that causes us to rate familiar statements as more likely to be true than unfamiliar ones.

Wisdom in the Age of Information and the Importance of Storytelling in Making Sense of the World: An Animated Essay

by Maria Popova

Thoughts on navigating the open sea of knowledge.

 

For my part in the 2014 Future of Storytelling Summit, I had the pleasure of collaborating with animator Drew Christie — the talent behind that wonderful short film about Mark Twain and the myth of originality — on an animated essay that I wrote and narrated, exploring a subject close to my heart and mind: the question of how we can cultivate true wisdom in the age of information and why great storytellers matter more than ever in helping us make sense of an increasingly complex world. It comes as an organic extension of the seven most important life-learnings from the first seven years of Brain Pickings. Full essay text below — please enjoy.

 

 


We live in a world awash with information, but we seem to face a growing scarcity of wisdom. And what’s worse, we confuse the two. We believe that having access to more information produces more knowledge, which results in more wisdom. But, if anything, the opposite is true — more and more information without the proper context and interpretation only muddles our understanding of the world rather than enriching it.

This barrage of readily available information has also created an environment where one of the worst social sins is to appear uninformed. Ours is a culture where it’s enormously embarrassing not to have an opinion on something, and in order to seem informed, we form our so-called opinions hastily, based on fragmentary bits of information and superficial impressions rather than true understanding.

“Knowledge,” Emerson wrote, “is the knowing that we can not know.”

How playing an instrument benefits your brain

When you listen to music, multiple areas of your brain become engaged and active. But when you actually play an instrument, that activity becomes more like a full-body brain workout. What's going on? Anita Collins explains the fireworks that go off in musicians' brains when they play, and examines some of the long-term positive effects of this mental workout.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0JKCYZ8hng&feature=em-subs_digest

Leaving Home - A short animated film by Joost Lieuwma

a film by: Joost Lieuwma
animated at Frame Order 

When his father decides Richard is old enough to leave his parental home, he sends him out into the world. Only Richards keeps returning home: every time in a more bizarre way. Somehow he seems attached to the house. When an unfortunate alteration in life takes place, Richard is forced to stand on his own feet...

Leaving Home - Uit Huis - by Joost Lieuwma from il Luster on Vimeo

The Beginning of Everything - The Big Bang

How did all begin? Find out here, watching this interesting video made by Kurzgesat. Kurzgesagt is a team of designers from Munich who loves science. The team makes fun, short videos trying to explain "serious" stuff such as evolution, climate change and the solar system.

How the ancient Greeks shaped modern mathematics – video animation

In this Royal Institution animation about a group of revolutionary thinkers who changed the way we see mathematics, we see that maths isn't just about performing calculations, but a way of understanding and testing the reality of the world around us. Ancient thinking is still helping engineers, scientists, economists, architects gain a better understanding of our world

This project was supported by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation. Animation by 12foot6. Narrated by James Grime.

http://www.theguardian.com/science/video/2014/mar/12/ancient-greeks-modern-mathematics-video?CMP=twt_gu 

Why do we cry? The three types of tears

Whether we cry during a sad movie, while chopping onions, or completely involuntarily, our eyes are constantly producing tears. Alex Gendler tracks a particularly watery day in the life of Iris (the iris) as she cycles through basal, reflex and emotional tears.

Lesson by Alex Gendler, animation by The Moving Company Animation Studio.

http://ed.ted.com/lessons/why-do-we-cry-the-three-types-of-tears-alex-gendler 

Mysteries of Vernacular: Quirky Animations Explore the Meaning of Language

Mysteries of Vernacular is an ongoing video series by NYC-based Myriapod Productions that explores the etymology of individual words through a carefully animated book. According to Myriapod the series will eventually include 26 stories, each of which takes nearly 80 hours to research, construct and animate.

Wishes 2014

 

 

 

 

 

What would you wish for the new year? A group of children animated 2014 and added their wishes: health, happiness, peace, creation, love, imagination...

The children met for three hours at Exile Room, Athens-Greece, and created all the images and sounds used in the film.
The workshop was carried out by Christina dePian together with the very efficient and helpful assistance of Ioanna Giakoumatou, Elena Ioannou, Luis Maly and Alexia dePian.