“It turns out the wired folk — they recognized like three times as many of their neighbors when asked.”
Archives for January 17, 2014
Ai Wei Wei: My Virtual Life Has Become My Real Life
“I post virtually everything I do on Twitter or Instagram. It’s a big art exhibition. Previously a few hundred, perhaps a few thousand people came to my exhibitions. Today I post a video and half a million people watch it.”
Is Claudio Abbado’s Orchestra Mozart Shutting Down?
Huge cuts in funding by the Italian government. The maestro’s health issues. After ten years the orchestra suspends operations – maybe for good.
Copyright Laws Aren’t Working For Anyone Right Now
Our current copyright laws clearly don’t account for the role technology plays in our lives.
Google Has Tried To “Map” Pop Music. Weird.
“What it provides, then, is a rough-and-ready map of the popularities of genres and artists over the years. Bear in mind, it’s not logging what people listen to, but what they own. And equally, note that Google Play users are a pretty small subset of music fans.”
What Does It Actually Mean To Be “Culturally Relevant”?
There’s room in the world for all kinds of art, and that includes retro art. But I also think that “how does this relate to other things from its own time?” is a more productive question for composers than “does this appeal to young people with mainstream tastes?”
How The Artworld Is Reacting To MoCA’s Choice For A New Director
LA’s Museum of Contemporary Art is troubled. In trouble. So the choice of a new director means more than it would in a usual leadership transition.
Hotbed Of New Music In A Very Cold City
Winnipeg. It doesn’t get much colder than this. But in the coldest month of the year, the city gears up for what has become one of the world’s prized contemporary music festivals.
The Early Buzz On What To Pay Attention To At Sundance
Sundance is a filter as well as a spotlight and a megaphone for lots of new things.
How Van Gogh’s Sunflowers Got To Be Ubiquitous
“Flower painting has a long history, but no other flower, Bailey argues, is so strongly associated with a particular artist as the sunflower is with Van Gogh.”
Margaret Thatcher Elbows Out Thomas Cromwell on Hilary Mantel’s Desk
Turns out that The Mirror and the Light, the final volume in Mantel’s Cromwell trilogy, will not be her next book- that will be a collection of short stories titled The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher. (Mantel does have a bit of news on the Cromwell front, though.)
How Do Words Make It Onto Those Worst-Word-of-the-Year Lists?
“People rather like [those] end-of-the-year … columns, it seems. Timothy Egan chipped in “Words for the Dumpster” in the New York Times on December 28th. There are 1,123 comments, nearly all nominating the commenter’s own least-favourite words. At the bottom of this present column are the first few hundred of them. … Now we can turn to a bit of analysis of what annoys people.”
UAE Censors Turn ‘Wolf of Wall Street’ Into a Mess
Think about it: Take all the sex, drugs and profanity out of that screenplay, and what’s left? Only three-quarters of the film, that’s what – not quite enough to make sense.
A New Wave in Pakistani Cinema
“After years of economic doldrums and creative drought, Pakistani movies are pulling in crowds at home and garnering awards at international film festivals. … Taking the power of storytelling into their own hands, Pakistani filmmakers are fashioning much-needed, nuanced portraits of their country – and cultivating a degree of national pride that hasn’t been felt for a long time.”
Norman Foster to Design Major New Skyscraper in Philadelphia
The tower, a major expansion of cable giant Comcast’s headquarters, will be the eighth tallest building in the U.S. and the tallest outside New York and Chicago. Inga Saffron is impressed by the plans.
See Some Renderings Of Norman Foster’s Philly Comcast Tower
It’s tall and skinny and textured and very open and well-lit.
Who Was It That Paid $142 Million For That Bacon Triptych?
Strictly speaking, it wasn’t one of the prime suspects, but it was close.
Crystal Bridges Buys Frank Lloyd Wright House to Move to Arkansas
As the flood plain in New Jersey seems to rise year after year, the existing owners of the house decided they had no more hope of saving the structure from water damage than King Canute.
Surprises, Snubs and Sadness in the Oscar Nominations
Yeah, there were some raised eyebrows at who was left out; no real shockers as to who was included. (Don’t worry about Oprah; she’ll be fine. Same for Tom Hanks.) Andrew O’Hehir analyzes the choices – and laments that his two favorite films of the year were shut out.
The Most (and Least) Oscar-Bait-y Movies Ever, According to Science
“We all have a pretty good idea of what constitutes ‘Oscar bait,’ but a forthcoming paper in the American Sociological Review by UCLA professors Gabriel Rossman and Oliver Schilke attempts to define it mathematically.”
The Sexual Food Chain: Is That Where Homophobia Comes From?
Lisa Wade: “So what’s homophobia? Sometimes I think it’s the moment that men feel what it’s like to be prey. See, women are used to it. … But when it happens to men for the first time … it’s like they’ve been treated like a human being their whole life and then, POW, they’re a piece of ass and nothing more.”
Fairfax County, Virginia Saves Arts Center From Foreclosure
The suburban D.C. county made a deal with Wells Fargo to cut in half the $60 million owed on the Workhouse Arts Center, built in a former prison in Lorton, and then assumed the remaining debt for the county.
U.S. Classical Music Groups Move Farther Beyond the Concert Hall
“Today, outreach is about finding ways to connect as equals with the population around you: an exchange, not a lesson.”
Internal Court Emails Could Change Roman Polanski’s Criminal Case
It seems the suggestions of bad faith on the part of a judge may have some merit.
Tea and Sympathy With Pussy Riot and a Russian Orthodox Priest
Yes, really. He’s a missionary who thinks they should have been shown mercy rather than sent to a gulag.