“You’ve heard of actors getting typecast. But there is no group more slighted, more narrowly cast, than the Muslim-American actors who earn virtually their entire livings pretending to hijack planes and slaughter infidels. Jon Ronson embarks on a soul-searching odyssey with the bad guys of Homeland, American Sniper, 24, and every other TV show and movie in which the holy warriors get mowed down before they even get to finish one good ‘Allahu Akbar!’“
Mind-Bending: The Psychology Of Awe
“Awe is not an everyday emotion. You don’t wake up awestruck. A satisfying lunch doesn’t leave you filled with awe. Even a great day is unlikely to leave you in a state of jaw-dropped, consciousness-opening fear and trembling. Perhaps that’s why, up until about ten years ago, psychology had surprisingly little to say about awe.” So Jonathan Haidt and Dacher Keltner set out to change that.
The Composer That Lyric Opera Of Chicago Found On YouTube
The company was looking to commission an adaptation of Ann Patchett’s novel Bel Canto. Jimmy López remembers getting a call about it from his friend, conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya: “November 18th, 2010, I was having lunch and I got a call from Miguel. He said, ‘You need to go home and upload your vocal music to YouTube.'”
Is The Next Bolaño A Middle-Class Brazilian Housewife Who Died Almost 40 Years Ago?
“No one converts the uninitiated into devout believers as suddenly and as vertiginously as Clarice Lispector, the Latin American visionary, Ukrainian-Jewish mystic, and middle-class housewife and mother so revered by her Brazilian fans … She writes like a medieval saint who time-traveled to a high-rise apartment building in Rio and took up chain-smoking and visiting fortune-tellers.”
What’s The Job Of Philosophy? To Make You Happy? Or…
“It is an oft-repeated idea that philosophy in its modern, professional form has become detached from what was, in ancient times, a founding ideal: to teach people how to live well. In today’s university, the emphasis is on the search for the truth about whichever subject lies at hand, regardless of how, if at all, such truths change what you do when you leave the classroom. So while students often report finding philosophy “therapeutic,” they do so in passing, somewhat guiltily.”
Is Silicon Valley’s Creativity In Danger Of Stunting Itself?
“The enormous, disruptive creativity of Silicon Valley is unlike anything since the genius of the great 19th-century inventors. Its triumph is to be celebrated. But the accumulation of so much wealth so fast comes with risks. The 1990s saw a financial bubble that ended in a spectacular bust. This time the danger is insularity. The geeks live in a bubble that seals off their empire from the world they are doing so much to change.”
Study: Link Between Ideas and Creativity
“How do you make the leap from a hazy notion to one that is spelled out in practical details? Newly published research points to one simple technique that may do the trick.”
Scientists Are Teaching A Computer How To Improvise Jazz
“Jazz musician and computer scientist Kelland Thomas is building an AI program that can learn to play jazz and jam with the best of them, under a DARPA-funded project that aims to improve how we communicate with computers.”
Now Watson Will Do More Than Humiliate You At ‘Jeopardy!’ – It Will Analyze Your Writing Style
IBM is now licensing a tool of its supercomputer “cognitive system” called Tone Analyzer, which “us[es] linguistic analysis to detect emotional tones, social propensities, and writing styles” and then provides “suggestions to help the writer improve their intended language tones.”
First-Ever Nude Public Performance Art Festival Is Coming (In Switzerland, No Less)
Founder Thomas Zollinger: “The Body and Freedom Festival … aims to explore the possibilities of the naked body in urban space and everyday situational life, thereby contributing to its establishment in this context as an instrument of art expression.”
The “Ballet Body”? I’m Sooo Over It
“I studied classical ballet for sixteen years. I was never a prodigy, but I was good enough to seriously consider it a career option. I genuinely love ballet in all its forms. And I despise the “ballet body” fitness trend.”
Who Do Writers Say Influence Them? (Hint: There’s A Common Thread)
“If a writer lists two influences and they both happen to be male – well, fair enough. They never both happen to be female, though, and receiving list after list of five, seven, 10 or more male influences is disturbing. It points again to the larger issue in the industry: our habitual, unchecked dismissal of the experiences, viewpoints and brilliant work of women.”
What Ever Happened To The Great Public Intellectuals (Understanding The Vidal/Buckley Debates)
“Why should we rue the disappearance of the “celebrity intellectual” when those who achieved that status so easily pass into cultural oblivion, as Buckley and Vidal are well on their way to doing? If the species were truly important, would its members not leave some sort of enduring legacy?”
Satire Used To Be Fun. So What Happened?
“Face it, audiences today are easily offended by satire—and the younger members of the audience (coveted by the entertainment industry) have the thinnest skins of all. What a surprising turnaround. Just a few years ago, parents wanted to censor comedians, but young people had open minds. Nowadays the parents are tolerant but their children demand trigger warnings!”
You Can’t Force Creativity. Here’s What Creative People Do
“Most creative geniuses don’t start with a specific goal and follow it through with deliberate practice. Instead, they maintain an openness to discovering whatever arises. Although this openness to new ideas might sound like just waiting around for serendipity to strike, it’s a more deliberate process.”
Great Summer Start For New Shows On Broadway
“It’s been a strapping summer for three of the four new shows of the 2015-2016 Broadway season, according to data released on Monday by the Broadway League, a trade group for theater owners and producers.”
University Of Akron Suddenly Shuts Its Performing Arts Center
“The University of Akron’s EJ Thomas Hall, which recently celebrated its 40th anniversary, shut down Monday as staff was laid off as part of the university’s budget cutting measures.”
Venice Biennale ‘Mosque’ Sues City For Right To Reopen
“The Icelandic Art Center (IAC) in Reykjavik – the commissioner of artist Christoph Büchel’s mosque in a disused church at this year’s Venice Biennale which was shut down by city authorities – has filed a claim seeking the immediate reopening of the project … [which] was closed late May after being open for only two weeks.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 07.27.15
In defense of the quieting of the audience (and so-called passive participation)
AJBlog: Jumper Published 2015-07-27
Art Review, In Passing, Reveals A Recurring Museum Problem
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts Published 2015-07-27
Harry Partch’s sonic cathedral – and what others have built around it.
AJBlog: Condemned to Music Published 2015-07-23
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Andrew Davis Re-Ups With Melbourne Symphony Through 2019
“The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra has confirmed the maestro will extend his original four-year tenure to lead the orchestra until 2019, parallel to his work with Chicago’s Lyric Opera and the Toronto and BBC symphony orchestras.”
Pianist Ivan Moravec Dead At 84
“A noted Chopin interpreter, Moravec focused on the ‘central’ Romantic repertoire as well as music by Czech composers. … [He] enjoyed a loyal following among piano buffs thanks to his recordings and relatively rare concert appearances.” (includes video)
How Old Should A Young Adult Author Be?
“Malorie Blackman left her own teen experiences behind a longish time ago but it doesn’t stop her understanding the overwhelming emotions of adolescence and their bravery in standing up for themselves and others when they see unfair things happening.”
How ‘Hamilton’ Found Its Groove
“A lot of times in the past when you’ve seen hip-hop used in musical theatre, it has quotes around it. ‘How crazy! We’re making hip-hop musical theatre!’ We don’t comment on it. We just take as a given that it’s the best way to tell Hamilton’s story, but like any other musical score, Hamilton has his own themes that he uses. It’s Peter and the Wolf; it’s what Sondheim does. When you hear this music, you know Burr’s coming onstage; when you hear that music, you know King George is coming onstage.”
The 70 Longlist Nominees Are In For The Guardian’s ‘Not the Booker’ Prize
Now to crowdsource the shortlist (that’s right – you can help books move on).
Reopening Your Musical Mind By Listening To Whatever The Kids Like
“I rediscovered my love for writing music. The young campers offered up creativity in its purest form. They were interested in making their own music without consideration for genre, marketability, or careerism, but rather with the intent of simply writing the music that they wanted to write. There was little angst associated with their writing process.”