“Throughout the Latin Middle Ages we find references to many apparent anachronisms, many confounding examples of mechanical art. Musical fountains. Robotic servants. Mechanical beasts and artificial songbirds. Most were designed and built beyond the boundaries of Latin Christendom, in the cosmopolitan courts of Baghdad, Damascus, Constantinople and Karakorum. Such automata came to medieval Europe as gifts from foreign rulers, or were reported in texts by travellers to these faraway places.”
Archives for March 2015
The English Language Stinks At Describing Smells
For instance, observes linguist Asifa Majid, there’s a Southeast Asian language that has a dozen different words that denote specific odor characteristics. Leaving aside words that refer to specific substances with particular scents (e.g., cinnamon, sulfur, burning rubber) English has – “musty”.
Top Posts From AJBlogs 03.30.15
Extolling Viñoly: Q&A with Bill Griswold on Cleveland’s New Additions & How He’ll Pay for Them
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2015-03-30
Very Sad Breaking News
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts Published 2015-03-30
Revisiting the Music of Elliott Smith
AJBlog: CultureCrash Published 2015-03-30
Color Surfing, Predonimant.ly
AJBlog: blog riley
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Deadline Apologizes, Sort Of, For That Terrible ‘Ethnic Casting’ Article
“Considering how much uproar the piece ignited, the apology is pretty weak, with co-editor in chief Mike Fleming Jr. seeming to place a lot of blame on the headline, which ‘created a context from which no article could recover.'”
The Man Succeeding Jon Stewart Is A South African Comedian Who’s Been On ‘The Daily Show’ Three Times
“The appointment of [Trever] Noah, a newcomer to American television, promises to add youthful vitality and international perspective to ‘The Daily Show.’ It puts a nonwhite performer at the head of this flagship Comedy Central franchise, and one who comes with Mr. Stewart’s endorsement.”
How Two Theatre Managers Became Impresarios Across The West End And Broadway
“With backstage space in the 123-year-old building being severely limited, and no spare cash available to rent an office, Ms Squire instead parked the car outside the theatre, and worked from there. So while having to dodge Westminster City Council’s enthusiastic traffic wardens, she would sit in the driver’s seat and do all the paperwork.”
Cedar Lake Ballet Shows The Perils Of Relying On A Single – And Capricious – Funder
“The big message here is that whoever that founding donor is, unless they’re willing to put enormous endowments behind their vision, their organizations won’t survive if they don’t invite other people in.”
What’s Realistic About Adolescence? Let Twitter Tell You
“Even those YA novels which aren’t [fantasy] deal with teenage lives that are considerably more exciting than the reality – and people have noticed.” Check Twitter for #realisticYA and the even funnier #VeryRealisticYA.
How To Be An Independent Musician
“In many ways, it’s easier to be an independent artist in 2015. We can arm ourselves with knowledge about the way things work. We can put something on YouTube and it becomes popular. We can access a huge mixture of diverse music. There is a price, of course.”
How Public Should The Public Art Process Be?
“Ultimately, you build more support for the Percent for Art Program and more support for public art when you engage the community,” Mr. Van Bramer said. “People are asking, ‘Just include me in a meaningful way.'”
Trying To Keep Hollywood Secrets In The Age Of SnapChat, Instagram And Whisper – And Hacking
“‘Post-Sony, getting people to cooperate with me has been a completely different experience,’ Ms. Zezza said. ‘Everyone gets that life has to change.'”
Google Is Adding A Mission – Documenting Street Art Before It Disappears
“Offering the best the street art world has to offer, the Google collection is an obvious boon for fans of the medium and benefits artists by giving them worldwide exposure. But cataloging, quantifying and curating run contrary to the street art ethos adhered to by artists whose ephemeral messages admonish and amuse people around the world.”
The Coloring Book For Adults That’s Sweeping The World
“Fan mail poured in from busy professionals and parents who confided to Ms. Basford that they found coloring in her books relaxing. More accolades flowed on social media, as people posted images from their coloring books.”
How Country Came To Rule The Airwaves
“It wasn’t inevitable that country music would thrive in the globalized world of perpetual Facebook updates, a world whose frenetic pace can be felt in electronica, or whose nouveau riche aspirations are extolled in hip-hop.”
Slideshow Of A Home Once Rejected
“These photos explore what the Chinese-American identity is, a coming-of-age story about the merging of two, sometimes polarizing, cultures. As I used art to understand our place and contributions in the country’s social landscape, I noticed something else.”
Britain’s First Cinema Is About To Reopen Its Doors As A Movie Theatre Once Again
“By 1896, the reputation of the institution was such that the Lumière brothers chose it as the UK venue on a world tour designed to showcase their film projector, the cinematograph.”
The Lawyer Who’s Preparing For Courts About, And Maybe In, Space
“I began to see analogues between the founding of the United States and what we would need to do to go into space. I want to point out very, very strongly that this analogy between the founding of the US and space law is not a call for United States dominance or Manifest Destiny in space.”
The Whitney’s Curators Mount A Big Show In The Museum’s New Renzo Piano Digs Downtown
“The show they’ve created is not a comprehensive survey of American art history, but rather a thematic look at ‘overlapping narratives,’ says De Salvo, told through a selection from the 22,000 pieces in the Whitney’s wide-ranging collection.”
Top Posts On AJBlogs For 03.29.15
Menil Collection Starts Drawing Center
AJBlog: Real Clear ArtsPublished 2015-03-29
Penguin’s Little Black Books Hit A Sweet Spot
“The commercial success of the commute-length gobbets – 80 titles ranging from the Communist Manifesto to Sappho’s poems to Mozart’s letters to his father – is striking since they are all in the public domain.”
‘Home’ Was Projected To Be A Flop For Dreamworks – But That’s Not What Happened This Weekend
Never bet against the children: “There is a sea of adult content, and they were able to march right in and take advantage of an enthusiastic and underserved family audience.”
Russia Fires Opera Director Who Put On Wagner And Pissed Off The Church
“Russia’s culture minister on Sunday fired the director of a Siberian theater whose modern staging of Wagner’s opera ‘Tannhauser’ offended the powerful Russian Orthodox Church. … ‘Orthodox Christianity is the foundation of the great Russian culture,’ said one of the signs held by the protesters in Novosibirsk.”
Hilary Mantel’s Notes On How Actors Should Play The Characters Of ‘Wolf Hall’
For Anne Boleyn: “In your lifetime you are the focus of every lurid story that the imagination of Europe can dream up. From the moment you enter public consciousness, you carry the projections of everyone who is afraid of sex or ashamed of it. You will never be loved by the English people.”
How Our Understanding Of War-Looted Artwork Is Changing The Art Marketplace
“There are hundreds of cases out there that are still unsolved. We are only beginning to realise that this was the most gigantic theft, aside from the terrible human loss involved.”
Would A Telepathy Machine Help Us – Or Should We Work On Empathy Instead?
“A telepathy machine, if it could ever be built, would undoubtedly have wonderful applications. It could allow people who are immobilised by a stroke or neurological disease to communicate, or create incredible opportunities for artists to collaborate. But it seems unlikely that it could broadcast world peace.”