Choosing to Die: Sir Terry Pratchett Comes to Terms with His Death

Befriending the Grim Reaper, or what Swiss sunshine has to do with the ultimate personal freedom.

In 2008, having just turned 62, beloved fantasy author Sir Terry Pratchett was diagnosed with a rare form of early onset Alzheimer’s. Three years later, he began the process to take his own life. Terry Pratchett: Choosing To Die is a powerful and fascinating film, in which Pratchett explores the cultural controversies and private paradoxes surrounding the issue of assisted suicide, which remains illegal in most countries. From the “small but imbalancing inconveniences” of the disease’s earlier stages to the loss of his ability to type to witnessing a terminally ill man peacefully choreograph his own last breath in Switzerland, Pratchett explores what it would be like to be helped to die, and what it would mean for a society to make assisted death a safe refuge for the dying.

What you’re about to watch, may not be easy, but I believe it’s important… Is it possible for someone like me, or like you, to arrange for themselves the death that they want?” ~ Terry Pratchett

When I am no longer able to write my books, I am not sure that I will want to go on living. I want to enjoy life for as long as I can squeeze the juice out of it — and then, I’d like to die. But I don’t quite know how, and I’m not quite sure when.

Snuff: A Novel of Discworld, Pratchett’s latest and possibly final novel, came out in October of 2011.

Complement with Joanna Macy on how Rilke can help us befriend our mortality.

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Bundled, Buried & Behind Closed Doors: The Physical Underbelly of the Internet

An anatomical tour of the Internet by way of 60 Hudson Street, a nondescript epicenter of global data traffic.

We keep thinking and reading about the Internet as a cultural phenomenon, but what about its palpable physicality? In 2010, it was estimated that the world produced over one thousand exobytes of new data, or one trillion gigabytes. Most of it doesn’t stay put — instead, it travels through the world’s servers, but where exactly does it go? That’s precisely what Ben Mendelsohn set out to answer in Bundled, Buried & Behind Closed Doors, a fascinating short documentary for his masters thesis at The New School. The film takes us inside 60 Hudson Street in Lower Manhattan — a deceptively nondescript building that houses one of the world’s major nodes of the Internet. The rest…well, you’ll have to see for yourself:

It’s really vital to remember that the Internet is physical. The Internet can be touched, it is material and it exists — because so much of the rhetoric surrounding current concepts of ‘cyberspace’ suggests that it’s somehow just this sort of magic, etherial realm that exists ‘out there’ almost on its own.” ~ Stephen Graham, Professor of Cities and Society, Newcastle University

Technology does not exist in a vacuum. It is shaped by the many people and institutions that extract value from it. With all this infrastructure, all this sunk capital, there is obviously much value to extract from 60 Hudson Street… A combination of historic, technological, and economic forces has embedded this concentrated piece of Internet infrastructure in the dense urban core of Lower Manhattan.”

(Bonus: At 0:20, you can see a shot of our view at Studiomates.)

via The Atlantic Video

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Gerhard Richter: Tate Modern Celebrates One of the Greatest Artists Alive

An ambitious retrospective on one of the most influential and prolific artists alive today.

Born in East Germany in 1932, Gerhard Richter is one of the most colossal and influential artists alive today, celebrated for liberating painting from the legacy of Socialist Realism in Eastern Germany and Abstract Expressionism throughout Western Europe. To celebrate the artist’s 80th birthday, the Tate Modern is hosting Panorama — an ambitious major retrospective of the artist’s work, including his most iconic pieces — “Ema (Nude descending a staircase)” (1966), “Candle” (1982), “Reader” (1994), “Stoke (on Red)” (1980) — and his hotly debated response to 9/11, “September” (2005).

The exhibition’s excellent companion volume Panorama: A Retrospective collects more than a half-century of Richter’s genius, including photo-paintings, abstracts, landscapes and seascapes, portraits, glass and mirror works, sculptures, drawings and photographs. From his early black-and-white paintings to his renowned abstractions to his paintings of family members who had been members, as well as victims, of the Nazi party to his photorealist depictions of candles, skulls and clouds that shaped 20th-century photorealism, the volume features Richter’s most celebrated paintings alongside comparative works, studio photographs, archival images, and Nicholas Serota’s revealing interview with the artist.

Gerhard Richter's 'Demo,' 1997 / Image courtesy of Gerhard Richter

Gerhard Richter's 'Mustang Squadron,' 1964 / Image courtesy of Gerhard Richter

Serota’s conversation with Richter was also released on video, very much worth the watch:

via Susan Everett

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What Is Motion Design?

From the dawn of cinema to Saul Bass to Digital Hollywood in 600 seconds.

From Motion Plus Design, a nonprofit project setting out to create the first exhibition center dedicated to motion design in Paris, comes this wonderful short film on the history of the discipline, from its start right at the dawn of cinema, to its coming of age in the 1940s in the work of experimental artists like Oskar Fishinger and Norman McLaren, to its Golden Age in the 1950s and 60s with icons like Saul Bass and Maurice Binder, to its explosion into omnipresence after the digital revolution.

So where is the boundary between animated film and Motion Design? Although this boundary remains blurred, the distinction lies where traditional animated film features a story in which characters express themselves.”

(See also this 2-minute history of film title sequences.)

For more on the subject, see Jon Krasner’s exhaustive Motion Graphic Design: Applied History and Aesthetics. And for a true treat from the greatest motion designer of all time, you won’t go wrong with the highly anticipated definitive monograph Saul Bass: A Life in Film & Design, designed by Bass’s daughter Jennifer and written by renowned design historian Pat Kirkham.

via Coudal

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