“It was Claude Shannon who made the final synthesis, who defined the concept of information and effectively solved the problem of noise. It was Shannon who was credited with gathering the threads into a new science. But he had important predecessors at Bell Labs, two engineers who had shaped his thinking since he discovered their work as an undergraduate at the University of Michigan, who were the first to consider how information might be put on a scientific footing, and whom Shannon’s landmark paper singled out as pioneers.”
Not Enough Good Roles For Actresses? A New 36-Woman Theatre Company Is Addressing That
Following 12 months of workshops and training for the participants, the London-based project, called Dangerous Spaces, will commission half a dozen playwrights to write scripts for six actresses each. Those scripts will be produced, along with an all-female Shakespeare staging, in the 2018-19 season.
Karaoke, And The Technology That Makes It Possible: A History
The phenomenon dates all the way back to the 1970s and 8-track tape players, and initially people did it at home as well as at bars.
There Has Been A Surge Of Interest In Boredom…
Quietly asserting itself in books and personal essays since 2015, the “boredom boom” would seem to be a reaction to the short attention spans bred by our computers and smartphones. The words “boring” and “interesting” didn’t exist in English till the 1800s, a period when…
Andrew Russell Saves Seattle Theatre, Heads To New York
The backstory: There wouldn’t be an Intiman Theatre in 2017 if it wasn’t for Russell. For audiences, for the company and the Seattle theater community at large, Russell has been nothing less than a turn-around artist — in some ways, a controversial one — whose upfront progressive politics and improvisational style made him a real mover and shaker.
The Fierce, Independent, Imaginative Women Of Novelist Claire Messud
Messud’s protagonists, “unusually for women in fiction, tend not to be wives or mothers. More often they’re figures who might be considered unpalatable, unattractive or — indeed — angry. Her work quietly seethes at the idea that a woman needs to be ‘likable’ — or that a man should be the judge of her likability.”
You Can’t Fully Understand Virginia Woolf Without Understanding Einstein’s Theory Of Relativity
It’s especially clear in Orlando, but that’s not the only text that shows how much Woolf took and learned from what she knew of Einstein’s theories. “In Woolf’s vision of life — which echoes the ever-evolving flow of her language — the universe may remain a godless dark riddle, but some starry doors remain ajar, leading to the wonderful and terrible who-knows-where.”
There’s A Big Hole At The Center Of The Arts, And It’s Shaped Like The Working Class
That’s the case, at least, in the U.K., according to a new report: “The systematic eradication of arts education in schools, sky-high drama school audition fees, chronic low pay and a lack of diversity behind the scenes are all contributing to a diversity crisis on our stages and screens.”
Could This Technology Solve Electronic Ticketing Problems?
“As Citizen Ticket’s technology – BitTicket – is based on blockchain, it means that batches cannot be oversold and tickets cannot be copied or counterfeited, while the number of tickets in a transaction is also monitored.”
Jack Rabinovitch, 86, Had Major Impact On Canada’s Literary Scene
Mr. Rabinovitch died on Sunday at the age of 87, a few days after falling down the stairs of his Toronto home. On Wednesday he was laid to rest, with hundreds of mourners gathering at the city’s Beth Tzedec Congregation to pay their respects to the man who, through a small act of literary philanthropy, did more to alter the course of Canadian letters over the last few decades than just about anyone else in the country.
Political Theatre Controversies Go Way Back. Consider This 1624 Play That Makes A Great Cautionary Tale
“Whenever anyone tries to argue that theatre shouldn’t ‘be political,’ I like to tell them the story of A Game at Chess. Thomas Middleton’s last play, which premiered in 1624, is mostly unknown outside of academia today; in the seventeenth century, however, it made quite a splash and resulted in the closure of the Globe theatre.”
What Music Did Alexander Hamilton Listen To?
“While rap aficionados and theater nerds have exhaustively cataloged the rich referential web of Mr. Miranda’s “Hamilton” score, little attention has been paid to the show’s engagement with the music that Alexander Hamilton would have known in his lifetime.”
Are Social Justice Warriors Making The World An Uglier Place?
“From declaring that one should interrogate one’s musical tastes for classism to fretting about yellow face in opera to musing as to whether a man can write a novel about rape culture, in the hands of the social justice warriors, artistic and cultural criticism is increasingly less about aesthetics and more about virtue signaling by the critic. Like all other fundamentalists, these secular descendants of the Puritans are so preoccupied with enforcing their rigid morality that they’ve forgotten the importance of beauty and creativity.”
Facebook Watch Is Not A Threat To YouTube
It is, argues Will Oremus, a threat to Twitter.
The Chopin Paradox
“The Polish composer and pianist Frédéric Chopin was no doubt regarded as a one-of-a-kind virtuoso. Which is peculiar, in a way, since he also stole freely and transparently from other artists. [Sara Fishko traces] the various influences that went into Chopin’s signature style.” (audio)
Why English Is So Rich In (Or Afflicted With) Puns
Big vocabulary, flexible syntax, lots of homophones – perhaps only Chinese is better suited for wordplay. Indeed, in the U.S. an entire circuit of punning tournaments has arisen. Says one frequent competitor, “I sometimes get embarrassed by how seriously I take this.”
If You’re All About Creative Placemaking, Best Consider The Place – And Now It Seems To Be Rural
As for this year’s finalists for ArtPlace grants, 34 percent hailed from rural areas. ArtPlace says it’s noticed an “increase in regional projects; many working collaboratively across adjacent rural communities.” It also said that proposed projects reflected a “sustained interest in water projects that, this year, focused on its use and preservation,” and requests for improving or introducing broadband access to rural communities to “increase economic opportunity.”
Met Museum Website Has A Digital Hit
“The Met’s website has seen a 64 percent increase in image downloads since Open Access was implemented, as well as a 17 percent bump in traffic to the online collection. Users who download photographs are now spending five times as long on the site.”
Talking To The Folks Who Do One Of The Hardest Jobs On Broadway: Understudy
Peter Marks meets Donna Migliaccio, Patti LuPone’s understudy in War Paint, and the subs from Come From Away, who each have to have five roles committed to memory.
Venice’s Rebellion Against Tourists Is Spreading Across Europe
“With the continent sweltering under a heatwave nicknamed Lucifer, tempers have been boiling over, too, as a wave of anti-tourism protests take place in some of Europe’s most popular destinations.” Demonstrations have taken place from Dubrovnik to Barcelona and beyond, with cruise ships and Airbnb being particular targets of anger.
Five Versions Of Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’ United For First Time – Virtually
“Six of those now-famous paintings survive, five in public collections … Alas for aficionados, those five publicly held Sunflowers are scattered over three continents and have never been seen together. But Thursday morning, their isolation ended, so to speak, when a ‘virtual exhibition’ reunited the Arles Sunflowers on Facebook in a single cyber-gallery – dubbed Sunflowers 360 – creating the illusion that they are hanging in a single space.”
Russian Censors Clear Controversial Film About Last Tsar
Matilda a sumptuous production about the young Nicholas II’s affair with a half-Polish ballerina, has sparked more protests in Russia than any other film since the fall of the USSR. Conservative Orthodox Christians, appalled at the depiction of an illicit (but well-documented) relationship involving a monarch they consider a holy martyr, have been demanding that the film be banned.
Choreographer Pam Tanowitz Wins $50,000 Cage Cunningham Fellowship
“The prize – which comes with $50,000, access to the [Baryshnikov Arts Center’s] John Cage and Merce Cunningham Studio for eight weeks and administrative support to create a new work – goes to an artist who reflects the innovative spirits of Cage and Cunningham, life partners and collaborators who were titans of 20th-century music and dance.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 08.10.17
Ystad 2017: Catching Up
Catching up is a noble ambition, but the quantity of music at the Ystad Sweden Jazz Festival and the tight scheduling make it all but impossible to be comprehensive. My notebook is … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2017-08-10
This Is The *Real* Underground Art Scene In D.C.
An old Dupont Circle trolley station, unused for decades, has been turned into a subterranean art space called Dupont Underground that draws more than 3,000 visitors a month (so far).