“The series is just four months old, and the symphony has made some unusual marketing choices — like not putting a link to Soundbox on its homepage.”
Archives for March 2015
The British Public Apparently Want ‘More Real’ And Older Women On TV
“The survey found that people want less scantily clad women on reality television shows as well and that audiences did not think that they were good representations of real people.”
When We Read, Our Brains Might Be Seeing All The Words We Know As Images
“According to a new study, our brain sees words we know like a picture, recognizing whole words, rather than strings of letters that require processing. By tuning neurons to respond to complete words that have been seen before, our brain allows us to read quickly.”
Strings Dealer Who ‘Kept Poor Records’ Avoids Jail, Pays Back Nearly $400,000
“Magby continues to operate his Guilford business, and his restoration and repair skills for these types of ultra high-end stringed instruments is world-renowned, Maxwell said.”
The London Skyline Campaign Is Trying To Save The Wrong Thing
“The look of these buildings matters as does the way they fit into existing surroundings, as does their impact on the street environment. But the height of them isn’t what matters most. It’s whether they provide the homes, offices and shops that the city and its people need.”
Six Seconds In The Studio That Influenced 1500 Songs
“Spencer retired from music more than 40 years ago and is now a novelist living in North Carolina. Although he was angry when he first heard the Amen break was being sampled, he now feels more at peace with it.”
An Actor Who Parlayed Her Dance Career Into Serious Movie Roles
Sally Forrest, who died March 15 at age 86, “began studying dance at an early age and was signed to an MGM contract shortly after graduating from high school. She had several uncredited roles as a dancer before being cast as a woman who has a child out of wedlock in the 1949 drama ‘Not Wanted.'”
Museums And Galleries Shutter As Yemen’s Political Unrest Turns To War
“Yemen’s artists, with photography a prominent art form that has produced several significant female photographers, were still working and producing interesting art, curators say. But ‘it is quite a challenge to be an artist in the country.'”
Does Children’s Theatre Damage Young Performers By Keeping Things Too Sweet?
“The typical demographic of the audience for the young company’s work isn’t enough to educate our young performers about the needs of an audience. How will they ever fulfil their potential as artists and theatre-makers without that understanding?”
A Chinese-American Artist’s Pastels Inspired The Look Of Walt Disney’s ‘Bambi’
“Inspired by Chinese landscape paintings, [Tyrus Wong] used watercolor and pastels to make sample sketches that evoked forest scenes with simple strokes of color and special attention to light and shadow. … Wong’s sketches caught Disney’s eye and became the guide for Bambi’s background artists, who were later trained to mimic his style.”
A Planned Skyscraper In The Alps Elicits Furious Response
“The outsize nature of the structure in the town of just 1,000 permanent residents is matched by the prices tourists will pay: according to The Telegraph, rooms at 7132, as the proposed hotel is called, will run from $1,000 to $24,000 per night.”
Will The Tate Give Back A Possibly Looted Constable?
“Tate Gallery says ‘new information’ has emerged over a John Constable painting in its collection thought to have been stolen by the Nazis. It has asked for a review of a recommendation that it should return the work to the heirs of the original owner.”
L.A. Actors Definitely At Odds With Each Other Over Equity’s 99-Seat Theatre Plan
Equity “surveyed its L.A. actors about ‘being a working theater professional in Los Angeles and what it’s like to be an Equity member,’ followed by focus groups and a town hall where members overwhelmingly spoke in favor of reforming, but not eliminating, the longstanding 99-seat plan.”
Seriously, Ballet, What Is Your Deal With Dancers Who Aren’t White?
“Dancers of color are again supplicants at the gate, begging to be accepted in an art form that literally can’t see us and so will not let us in.”
Carey Perloff: The Big Challenges For American Theatre
She’s disturbed by the way “many large-scale institutional theaters today have become roadhouses to incubate commercial productions headed for Broadway,” alarmed at the “relative paucity of female voices rising to the top of our profession” and frustrated that funding sources are so heavily focused on new-play development that there is “virtually no support for the training of actors” and not all that much for new approaches to the classics.
Tomas Tranströmer, 83, Winner Of 2011 Nobel Prize For Literature
“He wrote in exceptionally pure, cold Swedish without frills. His descriptions of nature were as sparse and alive as a Japanese painting. … His sparse output was highly praised from the moment his first collection, 17 Poems, appeared in 1954 and he was acknowledged as Sweden’s greatest living poet long before he won the Nobel Prize. He was translated into more than 60 languages.”
People Won’t Listen To Scientists ABout Climate Change? Fine, Then Let’s Dance Them To Undertsanding
“Scientists today believe that such critical information must be disseminated and quickly acted upon to avoid catastrophe. But that is not happening, as indicated by the ‘much talk, little action’ status of climate change. The central need is clearly not for more natural science research (although in many areas it would be very helpful). Rather, the social sciences and humanities need to be reorganized and refocused — ‘rebooted’ — to provide better understanding of human behaviors and how they can be altered.”
On YouTube: A Battle Over Fair Use And Superfans
“If you’re video maker who’s had a video flagged and you want to dispute it, the process is Kafkaesque. The copyright holder alone decides the outcome: It can uphold its claim. It can agree that your video does not infringe its copyright. Or it can do nothing at all for 30 days, during which time all advertising is suspended. Most likely, your video eventually is returned to you—but by that point, the damage is done.”
UK Funders Will Blacklist Museums That Sell Art For Profit
In a joint statement, the organisations said they were “concerned that a growing number of organisations are considering selling items from their collections for financial gain. Museum collections… represent an extraordinary act of generosity from one generation to another. It is clear that even when legally owned by museum governing bodies, they are primarily held in trust as cultural, not financial, assets.”
LA Philharmonic Extends Dudamel’s Contract For Three Years
“The extension means that Dudamel, who’s also music director of the Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra in his home country of Venezuela, will lead the Phil for at least 13 seasons. The orchestra did not disclose financial terms; Dudamel earned $1.44 million in 2012, according to the Phil’s most recent public tax filing.”
CBC: Death By A Million Cuts
“The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation announced Thursday that it is cutting another 244 jobs over the next six months to save $15-million annually, as part of its five-year plan to eliminate up to 1,500 positions by 2020.”
Used Records Are Fueling A Vinyl Resurgence
“It’s what fuelled the beginning of the comeback, as not many classic albums were available on new pressings even five years ago. Even now that they are becoming available again, many new reissues of classic albums are quite costly or simply still haven’t even been reissued yet, so used vinyl fills the need.”
Why Would Anyone Start A New Literary Magazine? (But Then…)
“Demand isn’t fixed or finite; it has the opportunity to surprise us. In strict consumer terms, people can’t demand what they don’t know about. The introduction of a service, a product or an idea is what ultimately drives demand. One of the things the LA Review of Books proved was that the demand for smart writing is larger than anyone expected, and what we’ve found in recent weeks is that there does seem to be demand for what we’re supplying.”
How Tech Criticism Is Failing Us
“That radical critique of technology in America has come to a halt is in no way surprising: it could only be as strong as the emancipatory political vision to which it is attached. No vision, no critique. Lacking any idea of how sensors, algorithms, and databanks could be deployed to serve a non-neoliberal agenda, radical technology critics face an unenviable choice.”
Report On UK Creative Industries: Here’s What Needs Doing
“The welcome emergence of London as possibly the leading creative industry hub in the world has disguised the lack of equivalent growth outside London, and this situation should be addressed by government as a priority,” it concludes.