“The small plastic LOVE signs that began popping up on telephone poles around town this spring put a smile on many faces in the Crescent City. Though they occupied the same space as grassroots street advertisements, they didn’t seem to have anything to sell. Because they are generically designed and commercially produced, they didn’t look like conventional graffiti or street art. Because they are rather small and seek to share such a universally upbeat message, they are difficult to dislike … even if they are illegal.”
The Way To Comfort A Depressed Friend (‘Cheer Up!’ Ain’t It)
The power of negative validation.
The Twee Aesthetic Is Taking Over (Fear It!)
“Is Twee the right word for it, for the strangely persistent modern sensibility that fructifies in the props departments of Wes Anderson movies, tapers into the waxed mustache-ends of young Brooklynites on bicycles, and detonates in a yeasty whiff every time someone pops open a microbrewed beer? Well, it is now.”
Russian Pianist Wins Utah’s Gina Bachauer Competition
“Andrey Gugnin, 28, was declared the winner of the 16th Gina Bachauer International Artists Piano Competition on Wednesday night, capping two weeks of competition that brought 37 pianists, ages 19 to 32, to Salt Lake City from 14 nations.”
How Corporations Like GE Are Becoming Serious Publishers
“GE has used sites like The Economist and Quartz for native advertising to promote itself as a supporter of innovation. But its biggest and most visible effort to date came in March with the introduction of Pressing, a policy news hub that pulls in content from millennial-aimed Vox, where Pressing made a splash as a launch sponsor.”
When Meditation Goes Bad
A psychiatrist and researcher at Brown University is studying an aspect of (now-trendy) mindfulness practice that most in the field avoid: the people for whom meditation leads not to serenity or increased focus, but terror, severe depression, or, occasionally, a psychotic break.
John Lithgow On The Single Greatest Challenge Of Playing King Lear
“[It’s] modulation. For Lear, the first half of the play contains four titanic temper tantrums of near bipolar intensity, and the second half tips over into dementia, bottomless grief and (spoiler alert) death. In rehearsing these opening scenes, I need to constantly remind myself how far I still have to go, like a marathoner husbanding his resources.”
Touchscreens Are Shaping The Ways Our Kids Interact With The World (And A Design Revolution Awaits)
“As the touchscreen itself increasingly merges with its environment, and embedded technology goes mainstream, this raises questions around design for the next generation of digital experiences and services. Designing for Generation Moth is going to require very different skillsets and ways of thinking beyond what we do now.”
Fight To Save A Failed Architectural Masterpiece That Went Terribly Wrong
“It was going to be a shopping mall and hotel on a scale never seen before, where people could drive right up the sides of the building to their destination, whether it was the swimming pool, the heliport, or even the top dome designed by Buckminster Fuller.”
Data’s In: Technology Is Widening The Education Gap, Not “Leveling The Playing Field”
“While technology has often been hailed as the great equalizer of educational opportunity, a growing body of evidence indicates that in many cases, tech is actually having the opposite effect: It is increasing the gap between rich and poor, between whites and minorities, and between the school-ready and the less-prepared.”
Once Art Is In The Public Domain Can It Go Back Under Copyright?
“Congress approved the recopyrighting, limited to foreign works, to align U.S. policy with an international copyright treaty. But the Golan plaintiffs—a group that includes educators, performers, and film archivists—argue that bigger principles are at stake. Does Congress have the constitutional right to remove works from the public domain? And if it does, what’s stopping it from plucking out even more freely available works?”
Jazz Bassist’s Bow Missing After Flight And TSA Search
“Now that it’s confirmed, I can tell you that good ol’ TSA confiscated (aka STOLE) my brand new bow right out of my hard case yesterday. I arrived in Saskatoon only to find the bow missing inside the case to my Lemur Travel Bass. Maybe they thought it was a weapon (idiotic), or they were looking for ivory, of which there wasn’t any. I will get to the bottom of this.”
Metropolitan Opera House Vandalized By Paint
“A vandal is wanted for spray painting obscenities on sculptures and paintings inside of the Metropolitan Opera house at Lincoln Center, cops said. It appears to be an inside job stemming from labor issues at the opera house, a police source said.”
US Supreme Court Did The TV Industry No Favors Squashing Aero
“If Aereo were around to make them move faster, it could be better for them — and their customers — in the long run. But they’ll be sticking with lucrative business as usual for now. Pretty sure we’ve seen this show before.”
Barnes and Noble To Split, Spinning Off Nook
“Barnes & Noble unveiled plans Wednesday to break apart into two companies, separating its retail unit from its struggling Nook Media business. The bookstore operator said it plans to complete the separation by the end of the first quarter of 2015.”
John McClure, 84, Master Classical Record Producer
“He made strong-selling recordings of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir; worked with Dave Brubeck, Joe Williams and other jazz artists; recorded Peter, Paul and Mary; and helped engineer the string parts for Pink Floyd’s … The Wall. But he made his biggest mark in the classical world, … [where] helped shape some of the most celebrated classical recordings of the 20th century, including acclaimed sessions with Bruno Walter, Igor Stravinsky and Leonard Bernstein.”
The Problem At The Heart Of ‘The Death Of Klinghoffer’
Alex Ross suggests that the opera’s ongoing role as a controversy magnet is rooted in “its pensive, ambivalent attitude toward present-day issues about which a great many people feel no ambivalence whatsoever.”
How ‘Frozen’, Of All Movies, Conquered The World
Who’d have predicted that a cartoon about a pair of princesses would become the fifth-highest-grossing film of all time – and win a slew of awards, too? Maria Konnikova and some research psychologists look at what makes Disney’s latest hit so beloved far beyond its expected demographic.
T.S. Eliot And Groucho Marx’s Touchy Friendship
With a 1961 fan letter, the WASP mandarin poet began a famous three-year correspondence with the wisecracking Jewish comedian. Re-reading the letters while researching a book, Lee Siegel found some significant and complicated tensions beneath the mutual admiration.
George Lucas’s Museum Will Be In Chicago
The choice of Chicago over San Francisco and Los Angeles for the institution – to be called the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art – “reflects both a bungling of the billionaire’s legacy project by the board of a national park in San Francisco as well as an aggressive lobbying effort by Mayor Rahm Emanuel.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 06.25.14
Working for Free, Pro and Con
AJBlog: CultureCrash | Published 2014-06-25
Seizure: Federal Prosecutors Issue Forfeiture Action
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts | Published 2014-06-26
Frames of Reference
AJBlog: Engaging Matters | Published 2014-06-25
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A Dramatic Rethink Of The Design For A New LA County Museum Of Art
The new design is meant to address concerns that the original plan would encroach on, and potentially damage, the La Brea Tar Pits at the neighboring Page Museum, casting a shadow over the largest pit.
Milestone: More TV Pilots Shot IN New York Than In LA
“Among 203 pilots produced in the 12 months ended in May, only 44% (90 pilots) were filmed in the L.A. region, down from 52% the previous year and 82% from the 2006-2007 pilot season. The rest mainly filmed in New York, Vancouver, Atlanta, and Toronto, concludes a study released Tuesday by FilmL.A. Inc.”
Claim: Canada’s CBC Is Being “Dismantled”
“Sources say a radically downsized CBC means that nothing is off the table, from the cancellation of some local newscasts to the phasing out of live music recordings on CBC radio to gutting the sports department.”
Remembering The First Rock Music Stadium Tour – Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young And The Summer Of ’74
“As the tour progressed, travel fatigue set in, along with the stress of juggling personal lives, and brittle behavior from too much cocaine use by some of the bandmembers. The dollar figure for the tour was never really known and the huge expenses the band was racking up were being billed back to them. On stage, the music was sensational. Offstage, drugs made their discussions sound more like pontifications or monologues rather than conversations—each one insisting that his viewpoint was the right one.”