I’ll go ahead and say that this print is one of the more famous art pieces in the world. It’s part of a series of 36 views of Mt. Fuji.
If you’re looking for ideas for student projects, a good starting point is having them recreate public-domain works in their own ways using whatever materials they choose.
For example: let’s say they wanted to use old software to create a 1-bit version (black and white) of this image. It might look something like this:
A very cool project from @hypertalking. He’s briefly recapped his process here and could inspire you or your students to get creative in unexpected ways.
This is a preview of my Friday “10 Things” newsletter. Friday editions are free for everyone.
Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends.
It’s the first week of January which means here in the US, the public domain was just infused with all sorts of new (old) content. Included this year are the later Sherlock Holmes publications (YES!) and Metropolis, an early film of art deco dystopia.
Millions of documents, images, and other media now live in the public domain, making them freely available to anyone. We can use those works as inspiration for creating our own, standing on the shoulders of giants, and bringing our own creative ideas into the never-ending mix.
As such, here are some things on content, creation, and the public domain that I thought were pretty awesome.
I know not everyone is a fan of classical music. I get it. But you don’t have to be a fan to recognize the impact that music written hundreds of years ago still has on musicians today.
Composers and songwriters still take inspiration from the melodies created by Bach, Beethoven, Rachmaninov, and many more.
Think of the possibilities with your students if you had one place to access all the available performances of someone like Bach.
Since the start of this unique project, more than 350 of the total of 1080 works by Johann Sebastian Bach have been performed and recorded in special ways. They include some remarkable highlights, such as the St Matthew Passion in the Grote Kerk, in Naarden, the Six Cello Suites at beautiful Amsterdam locations like the Concertgebouw and the Rijksmuseum, and Brandenburg Concerto no. 4 in Felix Meritis, in Amsterdam.
Informative texts, interesting facts and interviews with the performers provide a wealth of background information. All the works are performed by the Netherlands Bach Society and many guest musicians, and you can watch and listen to recordings of the complete works. In personal interviews, the musicians themselves talk about what touches them in the music or why they enjoy playing it so much. In order to keep close to Bach, the recordings are made at suitable venues, but we also look for unusual recording locations. Cantatas are filmed in a church, for instance, and chamber music at the musicians’ homes or at special locations in the Netherlands.
Of course, these works are available for performance by anyone since they are part of the public domain, allowing new generations to experience the work of a master and be inspired to create their own masterpieces.
