“The visitor experience this year will be phenomenal. It will be culture without crowds. You will be up close and personal with animals or art in a way you would never have experienced before and possibly won’t in the future. If you were ever going to have a holiday in Britain, this is the time to do it.” -...
As of January, 56% of the organizations surveyed still had staff furloughed or laid off due to the pandemic. That’s a decrease from the 74% of organizations that reported staff furloughs or layoffs in April 2020, when pandemic closures first started. Still, the amount these groups say they’re budgeting for personnel expenses in 2020-21 is 25% lower than in...
The set of symbols known in the Rapa Nui language as rongorongo is the only indigenous system of writing known to have developed among Pacific Islanders. Only an elite minority of Rapa Nui people could ever read it, and they died out before mainland scholars could record their knowledge. What's more, only 26 examples of rongorongo have survived. Is...
An efficient memory system involves “a finely orchestrated balancing act between data storage and data disposal.” To retain an encounter, deliberate attention alone will get you most of the way there. - The New Yorker
Intact depictions of the world's first known monotheist, husband to Nefertiti and father of Tutankhamun, are rare (subsequent rulers of Egypt tried to erase him from history), and those few that have survived unvandalized look so odd that many scholars think they were intended to be symbolic and stylized rather than naturalistic. Yet there is a surviving mummy which...
This sifting and ranking process results in a News Feed that is unique to you, like a fingerprint. But of course, you don’t see the algorithm at work, and you have limited insight into why and how the content that appears was selected and what, if anything, you could do to alter it. And it is in this gap...
Lyn Gardner: "Often an interval is only there to give audiences the opportunity to go to the lavatory and spend more money. It destroys the world of the play. Dispensing with the interval would remove another of those theatre conventions that are so much part of the experience that we've stopped questioning why they are there. The interval didn't...
One review of the science of loneliness found that people with stronger social relationships have a 50 per cent increased likelihood of survival over a set period of time compared with those with weaker social connections. Other studies have linked loneliness to cardiovascular disease, inflammation, and depression. - Wired
"Western classical ballet is still a very unfamiliar art form in India. But in the last few years, promising talent has begun emerging, often in dancers from disadvantaged or working-class families with no prior association with Western classical music or dance." And one particular instructor in Mumbai has made a huge difference. - Pointe Magazine
Aloha's ultra-low latency service connects artists remotely, effectively eliminating the lag time that interrupts the creative flow. This allows artists to collaborate and play together live, as if they're in the same room. For the San Francisco Opera's classically trained artists whose in-person music collaboration has been put on pause during the pandemic, this means that important musical cues...
There were staggered arrival times, temperature takers at the entrance, plenty of hand sanitizer, mandatory masks (a few of them fabu-fied with sequins). Every second seat was kept empty. In the pit, Gustavo Dudamel conducting a 50-piece orchestra; onstage, 75 singers, headed by tenor Gregory Kunde and soprano Krassimira Stoyanova, in Verdi's Otello. "Spain is an outlier here in...
Several prominent individuals in the industry have spoken out against the restrictive election laws just passed by the Georgia legislature and signed by Gov. Kemp. Yet studios and other companies — who have been willing to threaten boycotts in the past over such issues as Georgia's abortion laws — are keeping silent so far this time. What are their...
"The Survive to Thrive grant program, created by Ingram Content Group chairman John Ingram, hopes to raise a total of $2 million by the end of May to support indie bookstores. The program will be administered by the Book Industry Charitable (Binc) Foundation. Initial donations include a $500,000 contribution from Ingram Charities and Ingram Content Group and significant gifts...
George R.R. Martin, who wrote the Song of Ice and Fire novels on which the megahit HBO series was based, is working with playwright Duncan MacMillan and director Dominic Cooke on a big, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child-type play that producers plan to open in New York, London, and Sydney and/or Melbourne. The draw is that the play...
As prices for the digital artworks soar, with payments made in Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies, some observers are throwing around words like "tulipmania." Says the CEO of a company that verifies NFTs, "We're in a frenzy of speculation. … We're living in a moment of collective hysteria." Especially now that the finance guys are moving in on the art...
