Like the so-called "pivot to video," a lot of the industry was built on a house of cards that one might, with some justification, call lies. Starting new publications seemed so easy on the internet. "From the start, though, there was a problem. The super-low costs of entry and the lack of geographic limitations that were key to the...
Glass, concrete and steel are far from carbon neutral, says a leading architect working on climate change. "The production of these materials entails burning a huge amount of fossil fuel. ... The climate emergency is not a game and we can’t just spin our way through it. We need to think about where our materials come from, how they’re...
Restrictions both from public health officials and venues will be in place. "Venues can also choose to separate people into sections based on their vaccination status. Those who are fully vaccinated could sit shoulder-to-shoulder, but they still must wear masks." - Los Angeles Times
"A precise feeling of fondness accompanies the receipt of a letter from someone you care about. There are as many shades of this feeling as friends in the world. Yet I sometimes leave a letter unopened for days, not knowing if I am ready to read it. A friend I still write to confessed the same thing. I wonder what we think...
Public space is different now than it was 15 months ago. Streets have been turned to outdoor eateries and pedestrian malls; Paris removed tons of street parking and converted the Rue di Rivoli into a biking haven. Will any of this decentralization of the car - and concurrent centralization of pedestrians and bikers - remain? - Fast Company
The diversity is a silver lining of the awards season's weirdness. "A deeper, post-Covid existential crisis is on the cards. What is the point of awards, after all? Are they about recognising artistic excellence and the importance of culture? Or are they about showbiz glitz and beautiful people? How much impact do they have? And who gets to do...
Demby was a composer of electronica and New Age music. Her 1986 album Novus Magnificat: Through the Stargate sold more than 200,000 copies. "Pulse magazine named it one of the top three New Age albums of the decade and called it 'a landmark, full-length electronic symphony reminiscent of Baroque sacred music with crystalline effects that take you out of...
The list of things that went wrong at the Ovation Awards is too long to list - though the venerable East West Players did on social media - but the result of mispronouncing an Asian American actor's name, posting the picture of a different Asian American actor to identify the first actor, and much, much more, is clear. "The...
The internet is as much part of our utilities as water and electricity. The shutdown in this globally linked economy is destructive, and only part of that is planned: "In addition to stifling speech, communication, and digital rights, the indiscriminate internet blackouts are destroying Myanmar's economy, halting pandemic-related remote schooling, and disrupting health care." - Wired
One 53-year-old paramedic said, "I'd never written a song before. ... But I came home from work and said: 'I need to write this down.' I sat down, wrote some lyrics and put together a melody on my guitar. Putting it down on paper… I definitely found that helped." - BBC
Hello, freedom of artistic expression? Nope. Trademark protection - for both Satan and, perhaps, Jesus shoes: "MSCHF asserts that just like an earlier limited-edition of Jesus Shoes, these will be displayed in artistic collections, perhaps in museums. (In court papers, Nike has left open the possibility of amending its complaint to include a claim over Jesus Shoes, too.)"...
Sort of. "Still, how these works fare on practical levels — such as WiFi reliability and technical mastery of a visual medium — reveals the Internet as bumpy terrain for a field that breathes more naturally in shared public air." - Washington Post
Yuh-Jung Youn didn't have acting on her life plan. "The self-taught thespian never envisioned a life in the performing arts. Her international breakthrough seems to her, like everything else along the way, fortuitous. 'It’s embarrassing,' she said. 'Most people fell in love with the movies or fell in love with theater. But in my case it was just an...
"The idea behind NFTs was, and is, profound. Technology should be enabling artists to exercise control over their work, to more easily sell it, to more strongly protect against others appropriating it without permission. By devising the technology specifically for artistic use, McCoy and I hoped we might prevent it from becoming yet another method of exploiting creative professionals....
