These days more and more artists are challenging the bohemian stance that artists should shun economic capital in favor of pursuing art for art’s sake. Artists and creative workers increasingly lick their low-income wounds publicly and vent about the elaborate dance of self-reinvention in the digital age. It’s become trendy to discuss and even quantify exactly how little money is being made from creative projects. Mathematics has never looked so hip.”
Almost A Third Of The Great Wall Of China Has Disappeared – So Far
“About 2,000 kilometers, or 30%, of the ancient fortification built in the Ming Dynasty era has disappeared due to natural erosion and human damage … And the situation could worsen, experts are warning, as not enough is being done to preserve what remains.”
Suddenly, Ai Weiwei’s Art Is All Over Beijing – Is His Pariah Status Over?
Since his notorious 2011 arrest, China’s most internationally famous artist couldn’t show his work at home and couldn’t travel abroad. Galkleries and the press weren’t even supposed to mention his name. Now he has four solo shows going in the capital. Is the government rehabilitating him?
Rare Book Theft Is A Big Problem, And Booksellers Are Complicit
“Spectacular recent heists from European libraries have exposed something rotten at the heart of the international rare book trade. … What has stunned the book world is not just the scale of the thefts, but how easily the stolen goods were fenced and resold.”
Watching Male Strippers With Sociologists
“And, as it turns out, there’s been lots of [sociological study] done on male strippers who dance for women. With the opening of Magic Mike XXL yesterday, we thought this would be a good time to review the research.”
Classical Critic Edward Greenfield, 86
“He began his journalistic career in 1953 as a political writer for the Manchester Guardian, taking up reviewing recordings for the paper in 1955 (he was later appointed the Guardian‘s chief music critic in 1977, retiring in 1993).” He also spent 55 years as a contributing critic for Gramophone.
‘I’m The Most Influential Composer In The Last 50 Years,’ Says La Monte Young
“What’s more, when I die, people will say, ‘He was the most important composer since the beginning of music.’ It’s not just a work of genius – I did things no one ever dreamed of and I set up an approach to sound that parallels universal structure.”
Thanks To A Gang Rape Scene, This Opera Broadcast Has A Different Age Rating
“Director of Opera Kasper Holten defended the controversial scene saying it ‘puts the spotlight on the brutal reality of women being abused during war time, and sexual violence being a tragic fact of war.'”
How One ’90s Movie Remains (Sadly) Unique In U.S. Media
“Nair’s insistence on casting Indian actors in lead roles was a deal-breaker for many Hollywood studios. Only when rising star Denzel Washington was cast in the role of Demetrius did the film get studio backing in the U.S.”
Making Music Out Of Seizures And Smog
“If you had programming skills, you could re-associate number 60 with any sound – real or imagined – from the plink of a woodblock to the bleep of a computer. In the most basic sense, this is what Chafe does. With a free, open-source, downloadable program for music called ChucK, he transforms eye-glazing data: clarinets to represent carbon dioxide levels, for instance, overlaid with GDP data rendered in violins.”
Since We’re Talking Civil War, Where *Are* All Of The Monuments?
“The animated map shows how Union and Confederate markers accumulated over time and where. It also allows you to compare and contrast the language with which the two sections valorized their respective causes. As time progresses, monuments dot the map, accelerating at certain historical moments.”
If You Think Most Theatre Is Overrated, Perhaps You’re … Right
“The truth is that with any art form you have to wade through a lot of less good stuff to find the gems, and there is a purpose in the less good stuff because that’s how artists, novelists, film-makers and theatre-makers learn. And for the reader or the audience there is a real pleasure in going on a journey with an author or a theatre-maker and seeing them develop over a period of time. If everything was astonishing it would be very dull.”
Apple Music Is Actually A Return To Radio, Right?
Apple Music, or at least part of it, is “a simple but radical disruption of the individualized listening experience we’ve become accustomed to online. It’s in essence the opposite of what Apple Music’s predecessor, the iTunes Store, did more than a decade ago.”
The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain Wins Its Battle With A German ‘Copycat’
“The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain (UOGB) – the longest-running group of its kind – took action against The United Kingdom Ukulele Orchestra (TUKUO), which played its first gig just four years ago, complaining it was a ‘copycat’ group and could lead to fans booking for the wrong event.”
China’s Great Wall Endangered
“Citing a recent report from the Great Wall of China Society, the newspaper claims that more than 30% of the original structure has disappeared. Approximately 74.1% is poorly preserved, and only 8.2% is in good condition. While concerns about the wall’s condition have deepened in recent years, the study appears to be the first to actually quantify the problem.”
Why Do We Use Four-Letter Words?
“The use of offensive, obscene or taboo language is a linguistic feature in most human cultures, from the English “f**k off” to the French merde (sh**), and from the Indian sala (brother-in-law) to the Arabic yil’an abu ommak (curse your grandfather). While people tend to think of the “four-letter words” as modern phenomena, the reality is that the earliest recorded uses of these words date from 1,000 years ago (“f**k” is one of the most recent, from 1503).”
Flip: Turns Out Casting A Strong Female Movie Lead Is Good For Box Office
“New mid-year figures suggest that not only do movies with women in lead roles sell well, but there might even be a link between female leads and overall attendance boosts.”
Measuring Hispanic Audience Clout In America
“The Hispanic market has grown from $1 trillion in buying power in 2010 to $1.5 trillion this year, according to Nielsen data. And Nielsen and Google surveys find members of that audience to be among both the heaviest viewers of TV and the earliest and most active users of new media technology.”
BBC Slashes 1000 Jobs As Britons Migrate Away From TV To The Internet
“Some Britons have discarded their televisions — the main source of home viewing for half a century — in favour of tablets which many younger people use to watch programmes over a wireless Internet connection. The BBC’s Head of News, James Harding, last month predicted that by 2025, most people in the United Kingdom would probably get their television programmes over the Internet.”
Are Too Many Movies Being Made?
“Let’s talk about this supposed crisis of overchoice in the film business. In the past couple of years, there have been a lot more movies released. Depending on where you live, there may be twice as many movies being released in theatres each week as there were in 2000.”
Amazon’s New Pay-Per-Page Scheme Offers Shockingly Tiny Share To Authors
“In other words, for an author to make $1.30 on an ebook rental, he or she would have to write at least 220 pages, and the reader would have to flip through every page. As a literary editor told The Guardian, this could hit nonfiction writers and children’s book authors particularly hard, since their books tend to fall on the shorter side.”
Music Consumption Up 14 Percent In 2015
“Nielsen Music’s 2015 U.S. mid-year report, released Thursday, shows a 14% increase in music consumption over the first six months of last year. What’s driving the increase? For one thing, on-demand streaming, which nearly doubled year over year, rising 92%.”
Curtis Student Wins Top Tchaikovsky Violin Prize
“Yu-Chien “Benny” Tseng won the silver medal, second prize, in the Moscow competition, whose results were announced Wednesday. No gold award was given this year, which is not unusual. The Taipei-born violinist came to Curtis in 2008, and the following summer, at age 14, played Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons with the Philadelphia Orchestra at the Mann Center.”
Young Minimalist – The Disappearing La Monte Young
“Yet none of his major compositions are in print, he rarely performs, and he places such extensive restrictions on performances of his music that it’s rarely heard. He has all but disappeared, by his own hand.”
Network Bans “Dukes Of Hazzard” Reruns. Why?
“The flag will remain charged whether publicly visible or not, and so TV Land banning The Dukes of Hazzard is a banal gesture of how little we are prepared to confront the horror of Charleston, the continuing gritty day-to-day horror of all kinds of hatred aimed at all kinds of minorities.”