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COVID Is The Great Reset — And The Future Is Grim

What they are being told is this: In order for this economy to thrive, we don’t actually need you. We don’t need your labor, because robots and a few college kids will do ever more of the work. To which the unneeded must reply, “Yeah, but what am I supposed to do?” The answer to that question is becoming...

Wrecking The V&A Museum?

"The conceptual restructure, if it goes ahead as planned, will make the museum itself look curiously out of time, out of touch with the world and with its own history. If the planned changes to the V&A are a harbinger of what ‘Global Britain’ will look like, then a parochial, nostalgic future – marked by redundancies of vision as...

How (And When) Audiobooks Were Born

Fans have been predicting the audiobook’s ascendance ever since it became possible to record books. But when exactly was that? The audiobook’s origins can be traced back further than most people realize. - Cabinet Magazine

Irreplaceable Mills College Historic Music School To Close?

It has been an astonishing run. The school’s faculty over the years has been practically an index of maverick artists, including Darius Milhaud, at Mills for three decades beginning during World War II; Luciano Berio, who came at Milhaud’s invitation; Lou Harrison, who built an American version of the Indonesian gamelan percussion orchestra; the “deep listening” pioneer Pauline Oliveros;...

The Perfect Summer To Visit UK Museums?

“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.” -...

How COVID Has Decimated Seattle Arts

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 Mysterious Glyphs Of Easter Island

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...

How (And Why) We Forget Most Things In Life

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

Researchers May Just Have Reconstructed The Long-Unknown Face Of The Pharaoh Akhenaten

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...

What Algorithms Choose For You (Your Responsibility Too)

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...

The Pandemic Is Showing Us Plays Can Work Without Intermissions

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...

The Science Of Loneliness

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 Ballet Is (Just) Starting To Catch On In India

"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

San Francisco Opera Pilots Virtual Tool For Real-Time Collaboration

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...

At The Opera In Barcelona — Indoors, With 1,000 Other People

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...

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