As one trucker told reporter Alan Yu, “Every single driver I’ve ever talked to listens to NPR.” Why? Some of it is that the substance can keep people engaged for mile after mile. But this is also another case where geography is destiny.
So Much For The Public Square – Charlottesville Reveals Tech Platforms’ True Nature
“The recent rise of all-encompassing internet platforms promised something unprecedented and invigorating: venues that unite all manner of actors — politicians, media, lobbyists, citizens, experts, corporations — under one roof. These companies promised something that no previous vision of the public sphere could offer: real, billion-strong mass participation; a means for affinity groups to find one another and mobilize, gain visibility and influence. This felt and functioned like freedom, but it was always a commercial simulation.”
Brian Aldiss, Novelist Who Helped Turn Science Fiction Into Literary Art, Dead At 92
“Author of the classic Helliconia trilogy, and the story on which Steven Spielberg’s 2001 film AI: Artificial Intelligence was based, … he began publishing his stories in the mid-1950s, a time when SF was heavily dominated by US writers schooled in the markets of commercial magazines. Aldiss’s work came as a breath of fresh air to a genre beginning to suffocate in its own orthodoxies.”
Bea Wain, 100, Last Of The Big-Band Era ‘Girl Singers’
“[She] started singing on the radio at age 6, became a hit-making pop vocalist” – “Deep Purple,” “Heart and Soul,” “Kiss the Boys Goodbye” – “in the late 1930s and performed into her ninth decade.”
The Manchester Model – A Solution For Shared Community Arts Spaces?
The idea is to offer areas that are affordable to everyone, all the while “cross-pollinating” ideas that lead to a culturally vibrant city, whether it’s providing a desk for a playwright, allowing a theatre group share services with an asylum seeker’s support group, or renting out a cheap space for a club DJ to try out music’s next big thing (maybe).
What The French Understood About Jerry Lewis
Agnès C. Poirier: “Jerry Lewis was always a subject of a deep trans-Atlantic misunderstanding, one that triggered sarcasm in the United States, and bewilderment in France. While some Americans felt embarrassed by this contortionist comic, the French embraced Mr. Lewis’s humor as both an abstract art and social satire of American life. Americans mocked the French for falling for this crass clown, while the French couldn’t understand why Mr. Lewis’s genius was not obvious to his compatriots.”
Finally, A Ballet Movie Whose Heroine Resembles Actual Ballerinas
“She has friends. She goes out. She has a sense of humor. What she’s not? ‘Totally depressed and anorexic,’ said the filmmaker Valérie Müller, who, with her husband, the choreographer Angelin Preljocaj, directed the film Polina.”
A New ‘Anna Karenina’ Coming From Joffrey And Australian Ballet
“The partnership will team the Russian composer Ilya Demutsky, who has been commissioned to compose a new score, with the Russian choreographer Yuri Possokhov. A former Bolshoi dancer, Possokhov currently is choreographer in residence at the San Francisco Ballet.”
Ai Weiwei To Build Fences Across New York City
The exhibition uses fences as a way to explore immigration, boundaries and the ongoing refugee crisis. Ai, who lived in New York in the 1980s when he was a student, says it is “a love letter to the city and its people”. The outdoor show will include large-scale site-specific sculptures as well as photography to be presented in more than 300 spots, both public and privately owned, across the city
The Time Miles Davis Drag-Raced With Herbie Hancock
“We both get to the stoplight at Sixth Avenue. It’s like 2, 3 o’clock in the morning. I knew what was going to happen: As soon as the light turns green, we’d floored it, right! So we drove several blocks before the next red light. I got to the light shortly before Miles, and I smoked Marlboros in those days. I grabbed one, lit it, rolled down the window as Miles drives up.”
Scotland’s Herald Newspaper Cuts Coverage Of The Edinburgh Festivals In Half
“We are collectively concerned about the impact that this will have on the Herald’s coverage of the country’s vibrant arts scene, the fringe and all Scotland’s festivals. The arts thrive on quality arts journalism and an enormous contribution has been made by the excellent team of arts writers and critics at the Herald.”
The Engine Behind New Orleans’ Jazz Fest That Keeps It Alive
“In late April and early May, people in bars and restaurants and in the streets wish each other a happy Jazz Fest in the same tones as “Merry Christmas.” Nightclubs book special events for the nights after and the days between the two festival weekends; social and professional groups throw their own parties and gatherings. In a city that both defines and supports itself through culture and tourism, it’s one of the biggest and most active economic engines for both.”
Casting Directors Demand Recognition From Broadway League
“As one of the most labor-intensive industries in the city, Broadway production is a union shop for actors, stage hands, musicians, directors and choreographers, authors and others. The casting directors, who are seeking to negotiate a union contract as members of Teamsters Local 817, have had no luck so far getting the League’s labor committee to sit down with them.”
UK Report: Investment In Arts And Economic Benefits For Communities
The findings demonstrate “positive and strong relationships” between investment in culture, sport and heritage and positive economic impacts for local places, although the report notes that the precise mechanisms through which this influence is exerted require further investigation.
Why Shouldn’t We Be Able To Download Everything On The Internet?
What studios and labels should fear is something that makes downloading more convenient. The VCR and the DVR both upended the industry by letting people record a show and watch it later. Both won landmark lawsuits ruling that their existence amounted to fair use, that people could record programs and manage them on their own terms. Someone will come along and become the TiVo of the internet, the online DVR for everything you watch and everything you listen to. Someone like PlayOn.
USC’s Enormous Expansion: Disneyland Meets Hogwarts (But Without The History)
Christopher Hawthorne: “With its Gothic ornament, peaked arches and 150-foot clock tower, the complex is a fantasia of just-add-water heritage, equal parts Disneyland and Hogwarts. Even more striking, the Village barely pretends to have the courage of its neo-trad convictions. Once you walk inside any of the buildings it becomes clear that the Gothic exterior is a stage set, a false front behind which lies a drearily conventional series of spaces.”
Court To Determine: Is A Chihuly Really By Chihuly?
These are painful days for Dale Chihuly, as he winds down a long career facing a challenge that stabs at the heart of any artist: his originality. Mr. Chihuly emblazoned his signature on the world by working and rethinking the vocabulary of glass as art. Physical challenges and scars compounded the difficulty of that path.
This Summer’s Movie Box Office Is Dramatically Down. But There’s Good News?
Movie ticket sales in North America are running roughly half a billion dollars behind last summer’s box office, making this one of lowest-grossing summers in years. The 12.4 per cent downturn comes at a critical juncture for Hollywood, with constantly swirling fears about the impact of streaming, television and the bazillion other entertainment options out there.
Theatre Wants To Let Non-Theatre-Attenders Help Determine Its Programming
“Called the Visionari scheme, the initiative is looking for 20 people who are “regular, irregular and importantly non-theatre attenders”. The advisory group will spend a year learning about the theatre through workshops led by the venue’s staff. After the initial year the group will begin to guide, challenge and inform programming decisions at the theatre.”
The Glossaries That Define Africa
“When African writers get together on our own, we talk about glossaries. These additions to the main text, often vetted, if not entirely decided, by publishers, are crucial to how it will be received by readers. But when African writers talk about glossaries, we don’t just exchange tips. (How long? How comprehensive? By whom?) We talk about whether to include one at all, whether to offer glosses within the text or omit all glossing entirely. To gloss, or not to gloss? That is the question.”
Our Universities Have Lost Their Way And Are Facing Crisis. Let’s Get Back To Basics – Like Teaching
Universities have been growing for a decade, but most of the resources fuelling that growth have gone into expanding university administration, not faculty. One US study found that between 1975 and 2008, the number of faculty had grown about 10% while the number of administrators had grown 221%. In the UK, two thirds of universities now have more administrators than they do faculty staff. One higher education policy expert has predicted the birth of the “all-administrative university”.
Venezuela Cancels Dudamel Tour
The cancellation was first reported by El Nacional, which reported that the decision came from the office of the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro. It came days after Mr. Maduro openly mocked Mr. Dudamel, who is arguably Venezuela’s most important cultural export — and who, as the product of the El Sistema music program, has been an international symbol of the power of the nation’s government-supported social programs.
Museum Visitor Steps On, Damages Yves Klein Artwork
“Even though we have several safety measures (warning signs, a partial barrier and a guard), the man was too fascinated [with the other work] to notice all of that,” a museum spokeswoman tells The Art Newspaper.
In The Age Of The Internet, Is There Any Point To Protests And Demonstrations?
“What has protest done for us lately? Smartphones and social media are supposed to have made organizing easier, and activists today speak more about numbers and reach than about lasting results. Is protest a productive use of our political attention? Or is it just a bit of social theatre we perform to make ourselves feel virtuous, useful, and in the right?”
A Rejuvenated Salzburg Festival?
“In recent years, this most sumptuous of classical-music gatherings has reverted to its default identity as a parade of musical celebrities with no clear artistic destination in sight. Last year, though, the progressive-minded Austrian pianist and impresario Markus Hinterhäuser took over as Salzburg’s artistic director, and he is stirring memories of the festival’s most vital period—that of the nineteen-nineties, when Gerard Mortier presided over a superb array of provocations.”