This Week’s Insights: Rome uses tech to help visitors see its history… When crowd feedback becomes intimidation… Yo Yo Ma connects art to community… Is Mozart still opera as a video game?… Hudson Yards grabs rights from the crowd.
- Ancient Rome Around You: Of course walking the streets of Rome is already walking through history. But much of the history you see in the ancient monuments and buildings around you has crumbled or incomplete. Now there’s a digital renaissance underway in the Eternal City and it is helping to shed a light on the past – quite literally. From video projections cast upon ancient walls and multimedia light shows to virtual reconstructions revealed through 3D visors, technology is being used to help tell the story of Rome in a more concrete and compelling way. It’s a way of drawing Romans and tourists into the history they’re already in.
- Criticism Versus Intimidating Something Out Of Existence: We hear more and more from audiences. But when it comes to Young Adult literature, what, precisely, is the difference between the marketplace of ideas and a Twitter mob? A group of unpaid readers—one with an undeniable personal investment in the Y.A. community—seems to be doing much of the work of critique that is usually first the task of agents and editors, and then that of booksellers and critics. But, when these particular readers do that work, they are derided as pitchfork-wielding hysterics.
- Yo Yo Ma And Deborah Borda Talk Connections: So what does classical music have to do with social justice or community or, for that matter, the outside world. Music is a personal experience. At Harvard, Ma and Borda talked about art and community. Ma: “It’s never art for art’s sake, because even if I do it for myself in my head, I have an ideal. I’m actually trying to take something — a construct, a concept, a theory — and then I want to make it visible, I want to make it audible, I want to make it tactile. I want to make it felt.” Borda spoke of the New York Philharmonic’s efforts to engage with social issues, including gender equality. Recognizing that “all the music we play was written by men,” the organization is launching an initiative next year — the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote — to have 19 women write major world premieres for the orchestra.
- When Opera Becomes A Video Game: Is Mozart’s “Magic Flute” only “Magic Flute” when it’s performed on a stage? Now a video game maker has turned the opera into a game. Created by gaming company Opus Ludus, The Flute challenges players to take on the role of Prince Tamino and move through a series of adventure scenes, combat and puzzles as he embarks on his quest to rescue Princess Pamina, the daughter of the Queen of the Night.
- Hudson Yards And The Public – Who Owns What: Last week America’s most expensive real estate development opened on Manhattan’s West Side. Opening reviews were bumpy, including a scathing takedown in the NYT by architecture critic Michael Kimmelman. But Hudson Yards really stepped in it with its policy on photos. Centerpiece of the project is a Thomas Heatherwick structure designed, it seems clear, to attract Instagramming tourists. Hudson Yards claims it owns rights to all photos taken by anyone. When the rights grab was revealed, there was the predictable outcry, and developers modified the policy.
Leave a Reply