Documentary series looking at maps in incredible detail to highlight their artistic attributions and reveal the stories that they tell.

The Beauty of Maps (Seeing the Art in Cartography) is yet another example of a BBC television series which focuses on matters concerning data visualization.

It is another proof how visualization is becoming an interesting feature in popular press.

We love maps. And we love data visualization, of which maps are among the earliest and most ubiquitous examples.

As location continues to tickle the tips of trend analysts’ tongues and location-based applications take over the mobile landscape, it’s interesting – if not necessary – to understand the historical context of our relationship with location and geography.

The Legend of Leigh Bowery is an in-depth and revealing tribute to an outrageous and outlandish artist.

Whether he was making headdresses out of toilet seats, or giving birth to a full-grown woman in a nightclub, Bowery defined London’s culture of outrage and influenced a generation of artists and designers on both sides of the Atlantic.

He was also the muse and model for preeminent British painter Lucian Freud. Features appearances by Boy George, Damian Hirst, Bella Freud, Michael Clark, Rifat Ozbek and many others.

He designed costumes and performed with the enfante terrible of British dance Michael Clark, designed one of a kind outrageous costumes and creations for himself, ran one of the most outrageous clubs of 1980s London club scene Taboo (later immortalized in Boy George’s Broadway musical).

Controversial South African political satirist Pieter-Dirk Uys allows writer/director Julian Shaw into his previously off-limits inner world.

The result is a startling document of Pieter’s work educating school children about their country’s greatest threat, HIV/AIDS, and an unforgettable portrait of the power of individual will.

Entertainer, female impersonator, political satirist and sex educator: Peter-Dirk Uys is a man of many faces. A hero to thousands of South African children — and friend to Bishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela — he is also somewhat of an enigma.

Believing that he can help to prevent South Africa’s teenagers from joining the ranks of the estimated 5.5 million citizens with the virus, Uys travels the country wowing students of all backgrounds, flagrantly raising the most taboo subjects.

Shaw was so taken by the man that he took it upon himself to make a film about a fearless man with a mission — and a mandate.

Off Book is a PBS web series about cutting edge arts. It discusses: Seeing Beyond the Human Eye, The Evolution of 8-Bit Art, The Culture Of Reddit, Lego Art, Fan Art: An Explosion of Creativity, The Art of Film & TV Title Design, Tattoos: Pop Portraits, Japanese Traditional, American Eclectic, The Evolution of Music Online, Book Art, Product Design, Generative Art – Computers, Data, and Humanity, Video Games, Street Art, Light Painting, Typography, Hacking Art & Culture with F.A.T. Lab, etc.

Seeing Beyond the Human Eye. Technology defies the boundaries of human perception. From photomicrography to astrophotography, size and distance are no longer barriers, and through slow-mo and timelapse, we are allowed to see time and humanity in a new light. Through our curiosity and thirst for the unknown, the beauty of the universe can now be explored beyond the limits of the naked eye.

Lego Art. LEGO blocks are one of the most beloved toys in the world, playing a role in many a person’s childhood. But for some creators, LEGO has evolved from toy to art form. In this episode, we talk to three LEGO artists who have made beautiful mosaics, amazing stop-motion videos, thoughtful sculptures, and have turned these tiny building blocks into a true artistic medium.

Fan Art: An Explosion of Creativity. The fan art community is one of the most creative and active online. Taking pop culture stories and icons as its starting point, the fan community extends those characters into new adventures, unexpected relationships, bizarre remixes, and even as the source material for beautiful art. Limited only by the imagination of the artist, the fan art world is full of surprises and brilliance.

Is this man breaking the law, or following his faith? The leader of Canada’s most famous polygamist community – Winston Blackmore – opens his doors to what life is really like in Bountiful, BC.

Polygamous marriages in the religious commune of Bountiful, B.C. are once again under the scrutiny of the RCMP, following two decades of similar investigations that have so far failed to lead to a single conviction.

The Mounties have investigated plural marriages in Bountiful since the early 1990s, but persistent questions about the constitutionality of the law and a successful legal challenge three years ago have meant only two people have ever been charged and no one has been convicted.

A cinematic documentary from Chibi Moku about Wing Chun Kung Fu being introduced to the Philippines.

Shot over a period of 2 weeks in Manila and Laguna. Featuring Sifu Steve McGowan and Sifu Robert Greene. Also featuring actor Raymond Bagatsing and the rest of the Golden Harvest team.

Wing Chun is a Chinese form of martial arts that has quite unique techniques and foundations.

While wing chun can be found all over the world, including the Philippines, it’s a creative rarity of forms when passed through it’s different lineages.

Infamy is an intense journey into the dangerous lives and obsessed minds of six of America’s most prolific graffiti artists. Directed by acclaimed filmmaker Doug Pray (Hype and Scratch) who teamed up with writer, publisher, and graffiti guru Roger Gastman, the movie takes you deep into the world of street legends Saber, Toomer, Jase, Claw, Earsnot, and Enem.

With brutal honesty, humor and charisma, these artists reveal why they are so willing to risk everything to spray paint their cities with "tags,” "throwups,” and full-color murals. You’ll also meet Joe "THE GRAFFITI GUERRILLA” Connolly, a notorious "buffer” who paints out graffiti on his neighborhood’s walls with a vengeance matched only by those who vandalized them.

From the streets of the South Bronx to the solitude of a San Francisco tunnel, from high atop a Hollywood billboard to North Philadelphia for a lesson in "Philly-style tags,” from the Mexican border to a Cleveland train yard, Infamy doesn’t analyze or glorify graffiti… it takes you there and brings it to life.

Matthew Collings has a wonderfully simple and funny way of making you understand the when, where, why and how of important is art so this programme will get your head around impressionism in a couple of hours.

Matthew Collings will reappraise the Impressionists. The four stars are Courbet, Manet, Monet and Cezanne. In two hours their stories and their art will intertwine.

Matt will unpack the principles of Impressionism – the strength of color, the flatness, the patterning and the way in which ordinary life is pictured with startling truth – and argue that this is the best thing that has ever happened in modern art.

He will also show that although the contemporary art world seemingly despises Impressionism it is only because of Impressionism that the avant-garde came to be.

Author Ian Fleming wanted his suave secret agent to be the ultimate spy – but who provided the inspiration for Bond? This film reveals Fleming’s wartime service in naval intelligence and profiles two men who could have supplied the basis for Bond’s character.

On February 17th 1952, Ian Fleming sat down at his typewriter in Jamaica to write the spy story to end all spy stories. The central character of this story would become one of the world’s best-known and best-loved fictional creations: James Bond. Fleming would go on to write 12 novels featuring his super spy – each one an exciting blend of intrigue, escapism, sex and violence.

Bond’s popularity leaped when US president John F Kennedy declared himself a fan of the book "From Russia with Love”, but it was the start of the film series in 1961 that truly assured 007’s place in the big time. It is estimated that half the population of the world has seen a James Bond film, while Fleming’s books have sold over 100 million copies.

But is James Bond purely a fairytale? Can a 43-year-old former journalist with a liking for scrambled eggs, cigarettes and vodka martinis simply conjure up a fictitious character that has stood the test of time, without having some foundation in reality?

Fleming’s wartime career in naval intelligence saw him become intimately acquainted with the ways of the secret service, and he embarked on numerous top-secret missions to the US, France, Spain and North Africa. The events that occurred during this little-known period of Fleming’s life informed and influenced every aspect of Bond: his world, his women and his adventures.

Henry Chancellor, author of a book on Bond, believes Fleming "may have written fiction, but 95% of it was based on fact that had been filtered through the prism of his imagination and then polished up a bit”.

Mathew Collings makes a personal selection of the greatest artistic moments and monuments from history to examine how they have shaped our world. He embarks on an epic journey, to stunning locations across Europe, Egypt, China and the United States, to explore the changing ways in which cultures of the past have shaped our civilization. In doing so, he offers a unique perspective on today’s social and political issues.

Each episode in this four-part series addresses a watershed in artistic expression and explores how that transition has shaped Western culture and thought. 4-part series, 49 minutes each.

Ye Gods. Whatever our religious beliefs, the feelings we have about civilisation today would be unimaginable without the religious art of the past. Collings starts in ancient Greece. The Greeks absorbed the awesome power of representations of the gods left by older civilisations, particularly the ancient Egyptians, but it’s the element the Greeks added that still fascinates us today: lifelikeness, the human body, the feeling that this is art that celebrates what it is to be human.

Feelings. This episode looks at how art came to express our human emotions and the full range of what it is to be human. Mathew Collings examines the work of two great 18th century artists – David and Goya – in a journey that takes him from the glories of Renaissance Italy to the turbulent, violent Paris of the French Revolution.

Save Our Souls. The third programme in the series explores the impact of the industrial revolution on our ideas about art, nature and society, focusing on the visionary ideas of the British art critic John Ruskin. Collings follows in Ruskin’s footsteps to locations including Venice, the Alps and, closer to home, Britain’s stunning Lake District.

Uncertainty. The final episode of Matthew Collings’ epic sweep through the history of art and civilization tells the story of modern art and culture, from its beginnings in artists like Picasso, Klee and Mondrian, right up to the present day. It’s a journey which ends with the booming contemporary art scene in Beijing. But what does it tell us about the future of civilization?

This is the story of one of the greatest minds in history.

An artist, scientist, engineer, visionary and all-round genius, Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) was arguably the main figure of the Renaissance.

Over three gripping episodes, this docudrama from the BBC reconstructs the life of Leonardo from early boyhood to death.

Each episode is infused with brilliant academic commentary and includes the building and testing of some of Leonardo’s inventions, including his tank, hang glider, underwater suit, and parachute.

Did these amazing concepts work as Leonardo intended?

An enlightening and enveloping reconstruction of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s (1756–1791) life. Masterfully written and directed, every aspect of the film has been given thorough thought in order to ensure an accurate historical reconstruction. Inspirational performances from the main actors and actresses foster captivation, while regular narrative interjections from the popular composer and conductor Charles Hazlewood brings an insightful, educational dimension.

The story begins with the composer’s father Leopold with whom Mozart conducted a passionate and tortured correspondence. It is Leopold who knows Mozart’s secrets. And there is another voice: that of the music itself. Music is the key to unlocking the emotions of Mozart, starting in this film with the great piano works. Without this key, how can we ever understand the emotions that gave birth to some of the most beautiful sounds the world has ever heard? The first great phase of Mozart’s brief life was that of the travelling child prodigy – gifted as a performer and writer of music – who grew into the genius who, working within the restrictions of his time, began to rewrite the musical rules.

But there was another facet to Mozart – the adult thinker aware of the bigger picture, passionately attached to the progressive values of the Enlightenment – impressively well-read, a speaker of most European languages (even a little English), an Austrian Catholic, a Freemason and above all a composer at the height of his formidable powers, determined to succeed in the most difficult and lucrative area of all – Opera. (Excerpt from imdb.com)

Documentary series exploring the history of design. The first episode of this new series tells the fascinating story of the birth of industrial design. Alongside the celebrated names, from Wedgwood to William Morris, it also explores the work of the anonymous designers responsible for prosaic but classic designs for cast-iron cooking pots to sheep shears – harbingers of a breed of industrially produced objects culminating in the Model T Ford. Includes interviews with legendary designer Dieter Rams and J Mays, Ford Motors’ global head of design.

In the crisis-stricken decades of the 1920s and 1930s, with the world at the tipping point between two global wars, design suggested dramatically different ideas about the shape of things to come, from the radical futurism of the Bauhaus to the British love affair with mock-Tudor architecture and the three-piece suite.

The Genius of Design examines the Second World War through the prism of the rival war machines designed and built in Germany, Britain, the USSR and the USA, with each casting a fascinating sidelight on the ideological priorities of the nations and regimes which produced them.

The story of design enters the 50s and 60s, when a revolutionary new material called plastic combined with the miracles of electronic miniaturization to allow designers to offer post-war consumers something new: liberation.

Picking up the story of design from the drab days of the late 70s, the final episode tracks the explosion of wild creativity that defined the ‘designer decades’ of the 80s and early 90s. By addressing wants rather than needs and allying themselves to the blatant consumerism of ‘retail culture’ designers emerged from the backrooms to claim a starring role in the shaping of modern life.

This Is Modern Art was a series written and presented by the English art critic Matthew Collings.

The series won several awards including a BAFTA. It became popular both because of its sometimes jokey and sometimes thoughtful explanations of the work and attitude of a new wave of artists that had recently been publicized in the British mass media, and because of its author’s witty and irreverent, though clearly highly informed, commentary style.

Collings went on to create several more TV series and programmes for Channel 4, including Impressionism: Revenge of The Nice, and This Is Civilisation.

Focuses on the current state of modern art, and looks back at Picasso, Jackson Pollock and Andy Warhol to see how they changed the definition of art. Reveals the ways modern art attempts to shock the audience.

Investigates on whether the once accepted view of art as merely a thing of beauty prevails today, examining the works of various artists.

Beethoven was the grandson of a musician of Flemish origin who was also named Ludwig van Beethoven (1712–1773). The elder Ludwig was employed as a bass singer at the court of the Elector of Cologne, rising to become Kapellmeister (music director). He had one son, Johann van Beethoven (1740–1792), who worked as a tenor in the same musical establishment, also giving lessons on piano and violin to supplement his income. Johann married Maria Magdalena Keverich in 1767; she was the daughter of Johann Heinrich Keverich, who had been the head chef at the court of the Archbishopric of Trier. House of birth, Bonn, Bonngasse 20, now the Beethoven-Haus museum.

Beethoven was born of this marriage in Bonn, probably on 16 December 1770, and baptized the next day. Children of that era were usually baptized the day after birth, but there is no documentary evidence that this occurred in Beethoven’s case.