While the actors are high-profile, the production costs are kept down: small casts, minimal sets, simple tech, smaller Off-Broadway venue. A quarter of the tickets are free, distributed to community groups; another quarter are sold on show day for $35. Also, equal pay for actors, no star billing, no designated press nights. - The Guardian
“Cambodia escalated its cold war with Thailand on Friday when it announced a ban on Thai movies and TV shows and a boycott of the neighboring country’s international internet links. Tensions between the Southeast Asian countries have soared since an armed confrontation in a border area on May 28.” - AP
For decades it was the contemporary art world’s do-not-miss fair, but the Swiss mother-ship now faces competition from Art Basel events in Qatar, Hong Kong, Miami Beach, and, especially, Paris, a city which experience-minded collectors are likely to prefer to sedate Basel. - The New York Times
Steven Lass: “L.A. is not scary. You could be in a bad place at the wrong time, but that can happen anywhere.” Jason Roblee: “They did cancel our brunch reservation though.” Lass: “I lived in Hawthorne during the riots, so if all the buildings aren't burning, everything is good.” - Los Angeles Times (Yahoo!)
The Beaux-Arts landmark on the Champs-Elysées, built for the Paris Universal Exhibition (World’s Fair) in 1900, has been renovated for the first time in its history. Among the Pompidou exhibitions so far is Fun Palace, a pink, textile structure designed by Rotterdam architect Studio Ossidiana as a habitable "living laboratory.” - Dezeen
“The Barnes Foundation will be the new home for The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, a major funder of local arts programming, after the closure of the University of the Arts in June 2024 left the center without an organizational home. The Pew Charitable Trusts will continue to fund the center.” - The Philadelphia Inquirer
In glass-sided vertical wind tunnels, powerful fans shoot air upward at approximately the speed a human body would fall from an airplane. …But over the last 20 years, … because the tunnels can be viewed from the ground, indoor skydiving has become a spectator sport. - The New York Times
The many postmortems after The Village Voice closed in 2017, plus the disappearance of alt-weeklies in Philadelphia, Phoenix, Minneapolis, Baltimore, the Bay Area, and St. Louis, made the situation seem bleak. Yet in many other US cities, alt-weeklies thrive — and in some places they’re healthier than the daily papers. - Columbia Journalism Review
Depending on your perspective, Broad’s art is either a pioneering display of pure artificial creativity, a look into the very soul of AI, or a clever but meaningless electronic by-product, closer to guitar feedback than music. - The Verge
"For example, one respondent’s online collection included a semi-private archive that normally received a handful of visitors per day. That archive was discovered by bots and immediately overwhelmed by the traffic, even though other parts of the system were able to handle similar volumes of traffic.” - 404 Media
San Francisco ‘60s utopian counterculture, psychedelic drugs, defying authority, breaking rules, and a general sense of severing from the past for a brighter future all led to an explosion of new ideas,” says California native and instrument luminary Roger Linn. - Music Radar
“The 35-day figures for the 2024-25 season show that for series that originate on broadcast or cable networks, five weeks of streaming can grow a show’s audience by 40 to 50 percent — and in a few outlier cases, practically double it — from its linear total over the same time frame.” - The Hollywood Reporter
The importance of monasteries for the emergence of the Renaissance can hardly be overstated. Their number increased many times over from the sixth to the fifteenth century, from about one thousand to over twenty thousand. They were agents of cultural transmission. - LitHub
What is the difference between great and mediocre art? Why do some songs, poems, and paintings move us profoundly, while others—even if they impress us with their technical skill—leave us cold? - Psychology Today
Even amid widespread vocal pushback against generative artificial intelligence, industry leaders say its use in film and TV is slowly becoming mainstream. More filmmakers are using evolving AI tools, and studios are partnering with AI companies to explore how they can use the technology in content creation. - NBC News
