Kraftwerk To Perform 8 Albums Live At MoMA

Legendary German techno group, Kraftwerk will be performing eight of their studio albums live this April at New York's Museum of Modern Art. The concerts will take place from April 10 through April 17 and will feature the band playing live versions of their now famous albums with the accompaniment of three dimensional video.

You can get more info and read the full story over at Slicing Up Eyeballs.

To get you in the mode, you can watch a video for "Das Model" below.

LOOK: Stanley Kubrick's New York Photographs

Stanley Kubrick self portrait with showgirl Rosemary Williams.

Before his days as a renowned filmmaker, Stanley Kubrick mad a name for himself as a photographer with Look Magazine. Now, the website Twisted Sifter has put together a very nice piece on Kubrick's photographic legacy by compiling some of his best images of New York city in the late 1940's.

The collection is an impressive array of New York street scenes and people that deftly capture its place and time. And, these images seem a direct connection to the visual style of Kubrick's early films like The Killing and Killer's Kiss.

You can view the article and collection on the Twisted Sifter site.

UPDATE: Perusing the web and totally by happenstance, I just stumbled upon another set of Kubrick photos over at Retronaut. This time, the collection comes from a trip Kubrick made to Chicago in 1949, working again for Look Magazine. These images are just as impressive as his New York work. 

Penguin To Release Huge Collection Of John Steinbeck's Letters

Penguin Books will soon be releasing a mammoth collection of the letters of John Steinbeck, the American author most famous for novels like The Grapes Of Wrath and East Of Eden. Weighing in at nearly 900 pages, the collection covers correspondence from the bulk of the author's life beginning with his early years in California to his final days in 1968 in Sag Harbor, NY.

A noted hater of the telephone, Steinbeck preferred written correspondence. Within these letters, he touches on life, marriage, children, people he both loved and hated and the craft of his own writing.

The Atlantic published a letter from the book that Steinbeck wrote to his son Thom in 1958. It's a beautiful letter from a father to a son about what love means and the advice he gives his son on how to appreciate and embrace the love he has for a young with whom he's fallen in love while away at boarding school.

New York
November 10, 1958 

Dear Thom: 

We had your letter this morning. I will answer it from my point of view and of course Elaine will from hers. 

First -- if you are in love -- that's a good thing -- that's about the best thing that can happen to anyone. Don't let anyone make it small or light to you. 

Second -- There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance. This is the ugly and crippling kind. The other is an outpouring of everything good in you -- of kindness and consideration and respect -- not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable. The first kind can make you sick and small and weak but the second can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn't know you had. 

You say this is not puppy love. If you feel so deeply -- of course it isn't puppy love. 

But I don't think you were asking me what you feel. You know better than anyone. What you wanted me to help you with is what to do about it -- and that I can tell you. 

Glory in it for one thing and be very glad and grateful for it. 

The object of love is the best and most beautiful. Try to live up to it. 

If you love someone -- there is no possible harm in saying so -- only you must remember that some people are very shy and sometimes the saying must take that shyness into consideration. 

Girls have a way of knowing or feeling what you feel, but they usually like to hear it also. 

It sometimes happens that what you feel is not returned for one reason or another -- but that does not make your feeling less valuable and good. 

Lastly, I know your feeling because I have it and I'm glad you have it. 

We will be glad to meet Susan. She will be very welcome. But Elaine will make all such arrangements because that is her province and she will be very glad to. She knows about love too and maybe she can give you more help than I can. 

And don't worry about losing. If it is right, it happens -- The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away. 

Love,

Fa

The collection was edited in part by Steinbeck's widow, Elaine, who worked on the project prior to her death in 2003.

This American Life Adapts Live Monologue For Radio

For those of you who are devoted listeners of This American Life, you have likely already heard last week's terrific episode with storyteller, monologist and self-confessed Apple fanboy, Mike Daisey. If you haven't, what your missing is a terrific audio tale of Daisey recounting the story of his love for technology - the products of Apple specifically - and how he came to think in larger terms about where the stuff we use actually comes from.

In the hour of gripping radio that ensues, Daisey tells his first person account of his amateur sleuthing into the sweat shop culture of China. Specifically focusing on a tech manufacturer called Fox Con, Daisey uses an interpreter to find out what life is really like for these workers.  Once he's exposed to the grimy details, he's left figuring how to reconcile his love of technology with his guilt.

The radio program is a shortened and revised version of the one man show called The Agony And The Ecstasy Of Steve Jobs, that Daisey has been performing for some time at New York's Public Theater. Now, Mike Daisey has written a fascinating blog entry that explains some of the steps and procedures of how the radio program was designed and put together. It's an interesting window in to how we get a radio story about a story on how we get our goods. How very meta-meta.

You can listen to the full episode below. After you have listened to the TAL episode, be sure to check out the Mike Daisey blog article on how it all came together.

Guggenheim Offers 65 Books Online For Free

The Solomon H. Guggenheim Museum is now offering 65 art books from its archives online, for interwebs users to read and peruse for free. This move comes just a week before Apple has planned its big "textbook push" announcement at the Guggenheim Museum. The books in the collection include work from artists like Wassily Kandinsky, Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Klee, Francis Bacon, Alexander Calder, Edvard Munch and many more.

The interface for the Guggenheim site is very easy to use and at first glance the books available seem very well rendered for use on the web. This idea also seems like a huge leap in getting very expensive art books into the hands of users who are either intimidated on what books they should purchase or unsure of where to begin their own exploration of the art world. Its an idea with a great deal of promise. Hopefully, even more content is forthcoming.

For more details on the project and other great free e-book suggestions, head on over to Open Culture where we first got wind of this story.

Watch The Trailer For The LCD Soundsystem Documentary

Given the Sabauteur predilection for music documentaries, we have to admit some excitement and interest in the forthcoming LCD Soundsystem doc, Shut Up And Play The Hits. Not only is this film a music documentary, but it captures the end of a good band pulling their own plug. This is a phenomenon near and dear to our hearts, as exhibited in our love for end of days indie docs like Tell Me Do You Miss Me and A Good Band Is Easy To Kill.

The film chronicles the final live performance of the band at New York City's Madison Square Garden in April of 2011. Stylistically, the approach appears to be a combination of live footage mixed with LCD frontman, James Murphy talking about the end of the band. Adding to ourgeekish interest in the film, is the fact that Murphy is interviewed in these segments by the terrific cultural essayist and author, Chuck Klosterman.

Shut Up And Play The Hits will make its debut at the Sundance Film Festival later this month. You can watch the trailer below.