Multimedia

The medieval shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral has been recreated and the videos released 800 years to the day since his body was translated to the cathedral on July 7th, 1220. A project three years in the making, researchers teamed up with digital modelling experts to create CGI models of the four main … Read the full post →“Digital pilgrimage to Canterbury ca. 1408”

I was searching the archives for something entirely unrelated when Irving Finkel playing the Royal Game of Ur against Tom Scott showed up in the results. Of course I had to watch it all over again because that video is pure joy. That drove me to seek out and rewatch his all-too-short video on how … Read the full post →“Bingewatching Irving Finkel”

It’s been 59 years since the pristine wreck of Vasa, the Swedish warship commissioned by King Gustav II Adolf which sank less than a mile from dock on her maiden voyage on August 10th 1628, was salvaged from Stockholm bay. It broke the surface of the waters on April 24th, 1961, where, floating on pontoons, … Read the full post →“Celebrate the raising of the Vasa”

This year is the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s 150th anniversary. To celebrate their sesquicentennial, the Met has been uploading movies from their vast archive of films about art going back to the 1920s. The Met’s Office of Cinema Works opened in 1922 when the moving image captured on film was less than 30 years old. … Read the full post →“From the Met’s film vault”

There is a great deal of online content from museums and historical sites right now. I could never get enough of that kind of programming even before quarantine because most of the treasures of the world are out of individuals’ reach anyway just due to cost, time and distance. Virtual visits bridge those gaps, and … Read the full post →“Virtual guided tour of Pompeii’s Regio V houses”

The Smithsonian Institution has released 2.8 million images from its digital collection for broad public use, and that’s just for starters. The Smithsonian Open Access initiative removes copyright restrictions from images and data, releasing its vast database into the public domain with a Creative Commons Zero license, meaning digital files can be used in any … Read the full post →“Smithsonian releases 2.8 million free images and more”

Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat, filmed by Auguste and Louis Lumière in 1895 and first shown to an amazed public in January 1896, has gone upscale, 4K upscale, to be precise. Urban legend has it that when audiences first viewed the train barreling towards them on the screen, they screamed and ran for … Read the full post →“Lumière’s train in 4K”