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History & The Arts
Roman funerary monuments
How and what can we learn from fragments? Thousands of fragmented inscriptions survive from the ancient city of Rome, the majority of which are funerary inscriptions or epitaphs from tombs. This album looks at the impact of funerary monuments. From the Mausoleum of Emperor Augustus, to the more humble tombs of freed slaves, these monuments ...
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History & The Arts
Sensory augmentation devices
How can new technology help you to play a new musical instrument? The E-Sense research programme is experimenting with novel augmentation devices to explore sensory, bodily and cognitive extension. In this interdisciplinary research, philosophy and art combine with various flavours of computing: ubiquitous; wearable; and physical. We take a look...
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History & The Arts
Black British Jazz
What is Black British Jazz? This short film explores the research carried out by The Open University research team led by Dr Jason Toynbee who has been examining the history of Black British Jazz and the stories of the artists who have performed it. This video looks at the history of jazz and how the story dates back as far as 1919, documenting ...
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History & The Arts
Are you a Christian without a church? Take the survey
What does it mean to be a Christian without a church? What exactly do people mean nowadays when they describe themselves as Christian? Share your views, and learn about other people, in this anonymous survey.
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History & The Arts
Wordsworth re-visited
Renowned as one the key figures of Romanticism, William Wordsworth broke through poetic traditions and barriers to produce verse that redefined the principles underlying the writing of poetry, placing the poet's emotions and interaction with a natural, pastoral world at the centre of poetic philosophy. Wordsworth's influences are a topic of ...
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History & The Arts
Analysing European Romanticism
The principal tenets of the movement known as Romanticism first began in Germany and England, with the former pioneering the moral and philosophical beliefs and the latter producing the first Romantic artists and poets. This album concentrates on the development and spread of Romanticism in mainland Europe, analysing in clear, concise terms the ...
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History & The Arts
Building on History: The Church in London
How will the church maintain its identity in the face of religious decline in the modern world? This is addressed in Building On History, a collaborative project between The Open University, King’s College London, the Diocese of London and Lambeth Palace Library. The project aims to give participants within the diocese an archived insight to ...
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History & The Arts
The Final Cut
It is often said that a movie comes to life in the edit suite. Ben Harrex of Final Cut post production studios in London discusses five themes with examples; The Cut, The Dissolve, Cropping and Resizing, Titles and The Sound. Ben explains how the video editor has a huge amount of creative control over how the final product looks. This material ...
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History & The Arts
Re-assessing the Marquis de Sade
Donatien Alphonse François, better known as The Marquis de Sade, is infamous throughout literature and popular culture for a life and body of work that pushed boundaries. Literally synonymous with sexual and violent excess, his reputation as a writer is often clouded by the extreme nature of his work. In a series of lively and engaging ...
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History & The Arts
Buildings of ancient Rome
Rome: a majestic city with a rich past, spanning over two and a half thousand years. What remains to be seen of ancient Rome? As the heart of the Roman Empire, ancient Rome’s archaeological remains have been studied and admired for centuries, many being well-preserved due to their incorporation into newer structures. This album explores the ...
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History & The Arts
The Acropolis and the Parthenon
The Acropolis is one of the most famous ancient sites in the world. Rising over the city of Athens 150 metres above sea level, it consists of several significant archaeological remains of temples dedicated to various deities, and civic buildings. This album offers a chance to tour the Acropolis and examine its many buildings, including its best ...
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History & The Arts
The Graeco-Roman city of Paestum
What can archaeological remains tell us about early cities and the people who lived in them? This album examines the important remains of one city, Poseidonia in Italy, founded towards the end of the 7th century BCE by colonists from the Greek city of Sybaris. Although only twenty-five per cent of the site has been excavated to date, much of its...