“Portland has long been an incubator for artists looking for a vibrant and supportive community—minus the high cost of living in larger cities like Seattle and San Francisco. But a perfect storm of decreased development during the recession, and increased in-migration in the years following, has transformed Portland into a place where artists like Abernathy are being priced out as rents continue to rise.”
Archives for May 2015
Hugely Successful Theatre With An Unusual Business Model Is Making A Mark On Broadway
“Playful’s ability to commission and develop new plays is subsidized by an unusual business model: the producers take on the workmanlike roles of general manager on unrelated productions in the West End. The principals deal with contracts, arrange auditions and troubleshoot on shows without producing them, specializing in overseeing London musical imports from the U.S. such as Wicked, Shrek and Kinky Boots. It’s akin to running an international restaurant chain while spreading the risk and covering overheads by providing cutlery and menus to rival eateries.”
UK Arts Funder Warns Government Funding Cuts Are Damaging Culture
“In his first speech since becoming Arts Council chief executive, Darren Henley said cuts could halt recent progress in cultivating culture around the country. Arts Council England has had its government grant cut by 36% since 2010. Chancellor George Osborne is expected to outline £30bn of spending cuts to government departments in his next budget in July.”
NYT’s Decision To Not Review Every Movie In Theatrical Release Is A Liberating Moment For Criticism
“Reviewing a popular movie in this way involves a double-edged discernment—a virtual look behind the curtain at the kinds of decisions that brought the movie into being, and a look into the virtual soul of the abstract viewer whose enthusiasm the movie sparks. At its best, the result is a Nietzschean artistic psychology that acknowledges and understands the ways of power. At its worst, the commentary is a blend of armchair sociology and political ruefulness.”
British Museum To Stream A Live Tour Of Its New Show (And You Can Ask Questions, Too)
“The museum has British historian and broadcaster Dan Snow on hand to lead a 30 minute journey through the exhibition’s white marble statues, terracotta works, bronzes and ornate vases. There’ll also be the chance to post questions using the iOS and Android app.”
Netflix Now Accounts For a Third Of All Internet Bandwidth In The US At Peak Hours
The No. 1 subscription-video service accounted for 36.5% of all downstream Internet bandwidth during peak periods in North America for March, according to a new report.
Do We Still Need Libraries In The Internet Age? Yes, But…
“A government report showed that while the nation’s public libraries served 298 million people in 2010 (that’s 96 percent of the U.S. population), states had cut funding by 38 percent and the federal government by 19 percent between 2000 and 2010. “It seems extraordinary that a public service with such reach should be, in effect, punished despite its success.”
Connecticut Teacher Fired For Teaching Ginsburg Poem
“The unceremonious dismissal of a beloved teacher has thrown the town of South Windsor, population 25,000, halfway between Hartford, Conn., and Springfield, Mass., into tumult. The local newspaper denounced him in editorials. Alumni, town residents, and Olio’s current students crammed into Board of Education hearings to testify on his behalf.”
Did Bluesman Robert Johnson Really Sell His Soul To The Devil?
“Blues musician Robert Johnson is that grand rarity in the music world—a recording artist from the 1930s who can sell millions of records in the modern day. He left his stamp on the work of almost every later blues musician… But the rumors of Johnson’s dealings with the Devil are even more famous than his recordings. I’ve found that people who know nothing else about the blues, have often heard that story.”
Turmoil At Actors Equity Union (So Now What?)
“Its heavy-handed approach to the Los Angeles theater community reveals serious flaws both in Equity’s vision of the future and its ability to implement any vision at all. From the beginning, Equity misread the sentiment of its LA membership — perhaps out of a myopic view of LA theater — or simply out of ignorance.”
How Machine “Deep Learning” Will Change The Things Around Us
“Deep learning is particularly interesting because it has transformed so many different areas of research. In the past researchers used very separate techniques for speech recognition, image recognition, translation, and robotics. But now one this one set of techniques—though a rather broad set—can serve all these fields.”
Do We Truly Believe In Freedom Of Expression? Trying To Make Sense Of The PEN Protests Of Charlie Hebdo
“It was no small thing to observe a couple of survivors of the Charlie massacre make their way to New York, a mere four months after the slaughter, and be greeted with jeers and a boycott. A supremely chilly heart is needed to mount such a protest. And yet, a couple of hundred warm-hearted American writers lent their names to the chilly protest.”
Who Knew? Musicians Union Sues Hollywood Studios For Reusing Music In Movies
“For instance, 1 minute and 10 seconds of music from Titanic was allegedly used in This Means War; 47 seconds of music from Die Hard and 30 seconds of music from The Bourne Identity was allegedly used in episodes of The Office; 18 seconds of music from Jaws was allegedly used in Little Fockers; 33 seconds of music from Cast Away was used in Bridesmaids; 35 seconds of music from Battle for the Planet of the Apes was used in Argo … and so forth.”
Is This 25-Year-Old Composer The Great Hope Of American Opera?
There are more established young composers who write operas, but if contemporary opera has a rising wunderkind, then Aucoin has to be it — although his promise as a composer, conductor, pianist, poet and critic extends well beyond opera or any other single form. The conductor Johannes Debus says that the range of Aucoin’s talents exemplifies “Gesamtkunstwerk, Wagner’s term for everything at once.”
Was The Minnesota Orchestra’s Trip To Cuba Really Good Diplomacy?
“The best answer seems to be that, yes, such events can be important. But there is a major caveat: They matter when both governments involved want them to matter. In this case, the evidence suggests that both Washington and Havana are interested in better relations. So this visit is likely to have a small place when the history of U.S.-Cuba rapprochement is written.”
Justice? Instagram Artist Appropriates Artist Who Appropriated Her Work And Undercuts His Price By 99.9%
“Selena Mooney, who founded the website SuicideGirls, which has sold online access to erotic images for more than a decade, wrote on Tuesday that she would sell nearly identical copies of one of the pictures chosen by Mr. Prince. She offered a steep discount, though. Her versions, five different inkjet prints on canvas at the same size as Mr. Prince’s, cost just $90. Proceeds will go to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group, she said.”
Music Festivals Are Big Business These Days. Can A Festival Boost Spain’s Economy?
“In the midst of a country with a 23.7% unemployment rate, the growing festival is a notable bright spot in contemporary Spain. Even as the country’s young indignados demand major reforms, Primavera is proof that a well-run music festival can be an anchor for a recovering economy and a central element of its tourism.”
How Nostalgia Can Fuel Creativity
“Weirdly, nostalgia used to have a bad reputation—psychologists interpreted it as people avoiding the present, and it was even classified as a psychiatric disorder at one point. But recent research has shown that nostalgia can have positive effects, like making people more optimistic about the future and more willing to set new goals.”
New Book: Rex Harrison Was Not A Nice Man
“There he was, with all these endearments at the top of his voice. He treated us like dirt, we were nothing. We didn’t have anything to do with his film career.”
UK Court Orders ISPs To Block Access To Book Piracy Websites
“Our members need to be able to protect their authors’ works from such illegal activity. Writers need to be paid and publishers need to be able to continue to innovate and invest in new talent and material.”
Hitting + Things = Percussion
The world runs on rhythm. From the smallest heartbeat to the movement of the planets, rhythm powers and defines our lives. Modern percussion takes the rhythms of the world and makes them music. Learn how with master percussionist Steven Schick. This free four-class course will make you listen to music in a different way. Click to find out how.
How Doing Theatre For An Audience Of One Changes The Experience
“Acting is often spoken of as a narcissistic pursuit, but it seemed much more humble at Theatre for One. Why crave the attention of multitudes when the most we can ask for is to be seen—fully, if momentarily—by just one person? Being an audience of one started to feel less indulgent, too. When I stepped out of the booth, the line was twenty deep.”
Why An Artist Taking Other People’s Instagram Photos, Hanging Them In A Gallery And Selling Them For Tens Of Thousands Of Dollars Is Art
“Here he is delving as deep as he ever has into privacy, copyright, and appropriation, twisting images so that they actually seem to undergo some sort of sick psychic-artistic transubstantiation where they no longer belong to the original makers.”
Bartok – The 20th Century’s Loneliest Composer?
“Two careers, as composer and ethnomusicologist, would be more than enough for most, but Bartók managed a third, as travelling concert pianist. Finances were always tight, his relationships with women were complicated, and looming over it all were the tumultuous political upheavals of the first half of the 20th century.”
Rethinking The Museum Building So It Protects The Art From Natural Disaster
“Buildings now have to be designed like submarines. Do we have to completely rethink our infrastructure? Do we have to completely rethink everything?”