Brain Pickings

Animation Spotlight: The Chimney Sweep

What a paper airplane has to do with the quiet art of being human.

It’s video week on Brain Pickings, and we’re launching with The Chimney Sweep, a beautiful stop-motion animation in every sense of the word — beautifully written, beautifully art-directed, beautifully shot.

It isn’t flashy. There are no special effects or peppy indie music score. It’s quiet and simple and incredibly, touchingly human.

Put your headphones on to fully experience the subtle yet rich soundscape — it’s part of the film’s quiet magic.

The Chimney Sweep is the final-year work of UK art student Joseph Mann — whose feet are firmly planted in our up-and-coming talent to watch list.

Philanthropy Spotlight: 100 Girls Back to School

What 100 girls in Asia have to do with Copa Cabana beaches, or why private-sector philanthropy is the real global game-changer.

In October 2007, Victoria Orizarska, a successful thirtysomething finance professional with a fantastic career, riveting social life and enviable wardrobe, decided to trade it all in for something completely irrational and unmarketable — the pursuit of a lifelong dream. So she armed herself with a backpack and a camera, and set out to travel the world.

But besides the incredible richness of experiencing new cultures, Victoria was struck with something else — the devastating poverty stifling certain regions of the world. So instead of tossing some spare change at some charity to alleviate her privileged guilt, she decided to start a philanthropic effort of her own — the 100 Girls Back to School Appeal was born.

Sitting at the beach at Copa Cabana, it was very difficult to ignore the kids that rush to collect my beer can as soon as I empty it, so they can make 1/20 of a $1 on it.

The effort aims to to raise funds for at least 100 school scholarships for girls in South East Asia, India and Nepal — some of the least-developed areas, where cultural bias and economic constraint prevent girls from getting the education needed to break the cycle. To put this in the context of numbers, it will take roughly $250,000 to achieve the project’s goal — $250 per girl per year, for 10 years.

But heartwarmingness aside, the effort oozes one very important takeaway — you don’t have to be, or work for, an NGO to make a tangible difference. The private sector holds formidable potential for solving global problems — just ask Acumen Fund’s Jacqueline Novogratz.

So far, the effort has amassed over $28,000. Learn more about it, see the other side like you never have before (did me mention Victoria’s photography goes well beyond her self-described hobbyist level?), and contribute to one of the best grassroots causes we’ve come across in a while.

Futility Paints Utility: Wikipedia Reproduced

A 5,000-page homage to the times, or what the Boston Molasses Disaster has to do with digital culture.

Wikipedia is the world’s most glorious case study in crowdsourcing. And its utility isn’t merely in the amount of information available, but also in the incredible accessibility of it — anything from a complete run-down of Seinfeld to the Boston Molasses Disaster is just a search box and a few hits on the keyboard away.

So what happens if the same immense pool of information were available, only in a much less user-friendly format?

That’s exactly what art student Rob Matthews explores in his Wikipedia reproduction project — a 5,000-page tome containing all of Wikipedia’s featured articles, so large and dense that the Gutenberg press would’ve chocked on it.

A completely preposterous proposition, the project is a testament to the digital convenience we’ve come to take for granted. It’s a brilliant homage to Wikipedia’s utility by painting the utter futility of its analog antithesis.

Reproducing Wikipedia in a dysfunctional physical form helps to question its use as an internet resource.

Now, instead of leafing through to page 1,327 of the fully printed Wikipedia, go read all about the Boston Molasses Disaster just by clicking here.

via GOOD

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