Part of the challenge is that such questions aren’t really empirical; they can’t be answered by just by asking Americans about their arts activities. Rather, they’re normative and therefore, inevitably, political. - NEA
Rather than egging on a bull to gore him and then killing it, a competitor in this sport merely annoys the animal by trying to pluck off tokens stuck to its body or forehead. Despite healthy attendance, la course camarguaise now faces financial problems, angry detractors, and badly-behaved spectators. - The Guardian
The Bop Spotter project uses a microphone to surreptitiously and constantly record a street in the historically Latino neighborhood. Making use of a public Wi-Fi network and Shazam’s song-identifying software, Bop Spotter identifies the songs it hears and generates a public, ever-expanding list of the street’s music. - SFGate
Renewed interest in Appalachian art, music and culture has been drawing tourists to western North Carolina in recent years. Visitors to Asheville’s Buncombe County spent nearly $3 billion last year, accounting for 20% of the county’s annual economy. - NBCNews
Fifty-four Academy Awards and 267 nominations. That’s the sort of concrete impact the Black List has had since launching in 2005 as Hollywood insiders’ go-to index of emerging screenwriters. It now hopes to do the same for publishing. - Wired
"'Part and parcel of running a theater in Los Angeles is waking up two to four times a year and not knowing if you're going to be in business the next week,' John Perrin Flynn reflected after announcing his retirement as producing artistic director of Rogue Machine Theatre." - Los Angeles Times (Yahoo!)
"Pro Tools, as a sort of way of making music, on some level, has levelled the playing field that allowed people who can’t sing to sound like they can sing. And people who can’t play guitar now sound like they can.” - MusicTech
Just feed the raw material into a large language model and in an instant you’ll have a summary to scan. With OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Anthropic’s Claude as our wingmen, summary reading is what now qualifies as preparedness. - Wired
The company is looking to more-than-triple its space, to 40,000 square feet from its current 13,000. … If it were a matter of accommodating just the studios and staff, the current space would suffice, albeit in a tight fit. But OBT is seeking to expand its educational offerings." - Portland Business Journal
Hundreds of scientists mapped out those connections in stunning detail in a series of papers published on Wednesday in the journal Nature. - The New York Times
NPR news outlet KCUR and its sister station, KWJC/Classical KC, are eliminating several positions and leaving others unfilled. The most noticeable change to listeners will be a "pause" in locally produced classical programming in favor of a 24-hour national music feed. - Current
Pre-internet, the lines were pretty clear about the binary relationship between artist and audience. Artists created and audience consumed. In today’s digital world, the landscape is fluid—we create and express our identities by what we choose to share online. - National Endowment for the Arts
The Lightbox Film Center, a repertory cinema, had been operating for the past five years in one of the UArts buildings on Broad Street in Philadelphia. In the four months since the university's sudden collapse, director Jesse Pires has re-established Lightbox as a nonprofit and scheduled new screenings. - The Philadelphia Inquirer (MSN)
The singer, now 82, gave up touring in 2018, and he lost most hearing in his let ear while recording last year's album Seven Psalms. Now, he says, "I’m hoping to eventually be able to do a full-length concert. I’m optimistic. Six months ago I was pessimistic.” - The Guardian
Creative Scotland has postponed announcing its next round of funding grants, which were due this month. The agency says it still can't confirm for itself what its allocation from Scotland's parliament will be; the Scottish government says it must wait until the UK government in London announces its own budget. - BBC
