Yearly Archives: 2023
An Internet Game That Reveals How Musicians Discover Music
If you really dive into this thing, you’ll begin to learn how musicians hear, how they think, how they remember, how they forget, how...
Clapping As A Performative (And Meaningless?) Gesture
For the nation’s viewers, I think, this juvenile practice communicates something unserious: Which beaming retinue can clap harder for its standard-bearer? - Washington Post
American Historical Society Embroiled In History Wars
“We suffer from an overabundance of history not as a method of or analysis, but as anachronistic data points for the articulation of competing...
Golden Globe Organizers Say They’ve Reformed. Should We Believe Them?
The Globes have long had a reputation for booziness and irreverence. Will the revived ceremony still be seen as a less-staid alternative to the Academy Awards?...
Graphic Novel Imagines What Would Have Happened If Jan. 6th Insurrection Had Succeeded
Drawing on a rich tradition of comics that depict counterfactual and dystopian futures, this graphic novel breathes horrifying visual life into a world in which there...
The Case For Vandalizing Art In The Name Of Climate Change Awareness
We honor many protesters, past and present, who broke the law to advance a good cause. Suffragettes targeted great art in their struggle to...
The Age Of Incrementalism: Have We Got Stuck In A Rut?
Data from millions of manuscripts show that, compared with the mid-twentieth century, research done in the 2000s was much more likely to incrementally push...
Meet San Francisco Ballet’s New Leadership Team
Together, the company’s first-ever female leadership team will strive to innovate in ways that keep it at the vanguard of forward-thinking arts organizations while...
Yay! The Death Of TV Laugh Tracks
Was it only proven brain dead in late 2021, when no sweetened TV sitcoms debuted on U.S. networks during the all-important fall season? -...
Making Theatre On The Edge Of A War Zone
With a country in flames across Poland’s eastern border, I traveled to Krakow last month to erase some of that distance. I wanted to...
Some Film Sets Are (Finally) Getting Therapy
Why? "Film and TV sets can be stressful and dangerous places to work. The pandemic added a raft of anxieties as cast and crews returned...
Dance Is Easing Some Pain For Survivors Of Civil War In Peru
The dance program Buenas Notícias, for those who suffered during the Shining Path insurgencies of the 1980s and '90s, "helps women connect with others...
The Latest Chapter In The Saga Of The Italian Man Who Stole Unfinished Manuscripts...
Filippo Bernardini pleaded guilty in U.S. federal court last Friday, admitting he "had engaged in an elaborate email-impersonation scheme aimed at duping others in...
American Historical Society Embroiled In History Wars
And at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association, the argument over how to treat "history" has flared up into fierce battles over...
The Intimate Opera Of PROTOTYPE
Call it intimate opera, call it black-box opera, but the small-venue opera festival is making a post-COVID shutdown return. - NPR
Warner Bros Thinks We’re Ready To Pay More For Streaming
Sure, heck, it's only a time of rampant inflation. Tell us, current CFO, just how much more should we be paying for Warner Bros....
Outrage Spreads At An Author’s Faked Death And Recent Online Resurrection
After someone claiming to be the daughter of indie author Susan Meachen wrote that the author had died by suicide in 2020, her community...
Russell Banks, Award-Winning Author Of ‘Cloudsplitter’ And More, 82
Banks's "vivid portrayals of working-class Americans grappling with issues of poverty, race and class placed him among the first ranks of contemporary novelists." His...
The Poetry-Filled Nightstand Of San Francisco
In Golden Gate Park, a park ranger placed a piece of furniture with instructions: "'Take a poem, leave a poem.' Since the nightstand’s debut there...
Let’s All Calm Down About ChatGPT
Will the AI program kill high school English? Well ... maybe. But "if ChatGPT can do the things we ask students to do in...
After 29 Years In New York, STOMP Comes To An End
The co-producer says foreign tourist ticket money hasn't returned to New York in the COVID era. But the "group of street performers banging stuff"...
Why Writer Katherine Mansfield Divided Opinion A Century Ago, And Still Does Today
""One explanation might lie in Mansfield’s keen sense of the absurd and the striking lack of anything deferential in her attitude – whether towards...
Acting To Change History, Not To Win Awards
Danielle Deadwyler plays Mamie Till in the movie Till. She says, "It is a bigger thing to combat racism, right? And racism is seedy,...
Right-Wing Italian Government Targets Music Producers And Promoters
Italy has a draconian - and patently ridiculous - new code: "It makes organising raves a specific crime punishable with three to six years...
Speaking Of AI, Why Are We So Creeped Out By Dancing Robots?
"People have been afraid of robots for as long as robots have existed. But robots that can dance — really dance — are distinctly unnerving." - The...
