Well, you probably know why. “With its descriptions of human social life subsumed by technology and images, it is often cited as a prophecy of the dangers of the internet age now upon us. And perhaps more than any other 20th-century philosophical work, it captures the profoundly odd moment we are now living through, under the presidential reign of Donald Trump.”
Has ‘Interesting’ Has Become A Meaningless Concept?
Simon L. Garfinkel: Calling something interesting is the height of sloppy thinking. Interesting is not descriptive, not objective, and not even meaningful. … Interesting is a kind of linguistic connective tissue. When introducing an idea, it’s easier to say ‘interesting’ than to think of an introduction that’s simultaneously descriptive but not a spoiler. … In practice, interesting is a synonym for entertaining.”
Portland, Maine Classical Radio Station Abruptly Switches To Country
The announcement said no more than this: “We would like to thank the fans of WBACH and classical music for listening over the years and we regret any inconvenience as a result of the changes.” WBACH’s frequency is now used to simulcast a country station just a little ways down the dial.
As Machines Learn To Think, Humans Will Be Redundant
“Dataism is a new ethical system that says, yes, humans were special and important because up until now they were the most sophisticated data processing system in the universe, but this is no longer the case. The tipping point is when you have an external algorithm that understands you—your feelings, emotions, choices, desires—better than you understand them yourself. That’s the point when there is the switch from amplifying humans to making them redundant.”
How They Made That Freeway Dance Scene In La La Land
Susan Stamberg: “The scene was filmed with 30 professional dancers and more than 100 extras on a 104-degree day. They first rehearsed in a parking lot, and later the actual freeway at 3:00 o’clock in the morning. On paper, Moore and director Damien Chazelle mapped out where the cameras would go. That morphed into 3D on a model ramp with toy cars. Then it was show time, which meant shutting down the freeway ramp for two days of shooting. All in all, it took 47 takes — for a three-minute and 48-second dance number that occurs entirely before the movie title looms up on screen.”
Where’s Hillary? On Broadway, Of Course…
“Mrs. Clinton has been attending Broadway shows for years, often when she has had a personal connection to an artist, a producer, or to a show’s subject matter.”
The Case For Shyness As An Asset
“Today, in the United States, shyness is often associated with a broad jumble of related and overlapping conditions, from occasional timidness to general awkwardness, from stage fright to the DSM-recognized social anxiety disorder. This imprecision is, it turns out, fitting: Shyness isn’t a single situation or character.”
Trump Is Having An Interesting Impact On How TV Networks Think About New Shows
ABC’s entertainment president Channing Dungey has already contended that her network’s programming may very well be out of touch. “With our dramas, we have a lot of shows that feature very well-to-do, well-educated people, who are driving very nice cars and living in extremely nice places,” she told attendees at the 2016 Content London conference “But in recent history we haven’t paid enough attention to some of the true realities of what life is like for everyday Americans in our dramas.”
David Hallberg To Be Australian Ballet’s First International Resident Guest Artist
He injured his foot 2½ years ago – far more seriously than he first realized. More than a year afterward, when he realized he still couldn’t perform, he traveled to the other end of the globe and put himself in the hands of Australian Ballet’s physiotherapy team. They healed him, and he’s very grateful.
Trump’s “Enemy Of The People” Comment? It Comes From An Ibsen Play…
So that’s where “enemy of the people” comes from. The enemy was unpopular, and undoubtedly an “elitist”; but he trafficked in fact, and he was right. Trump obviously had no grasp of this
When Does (And Doesn’t) Film Music Qualify As ‘Classical’? Ask Philip Glass And John Corigliano
“Philip Glass and John Corigliano are both regarded as classical composers first and foremost despite their work for the cinema. But both, as Jed Distler found out, find that the lines between classical and film music are by no means clear-cut.”
General Director Who Stabilized Bolshoi Theater Gets Term Extended By Putin Himself
There was even more backstage drama than usual at Russia’s flagship opera and ballet theater earlier this decade – most famously, the acid attack on former ballet director Sergei Filin, but also on the opera side. Vladimir Urin was hired in 2013 to bring order to the house, and the President seems pleased with how Urin has done it.
Unknown Novel By Walt Whitman Rediscovered
The Life and Adventures of Jack Engle, published without a byline, was serialized in the New York Sunday Dispatch 165 years ago. Jennifer Schuessler tells how a graduate student at the University of Houston found the novel and figured out its authorship.
‘Moonlight’ And ‘Arrival’ Win Writers Guild’s Best Screenplay Prizes
At the last of the big awards ceremonies before the Oscars on Sunday, “Moonlight won for best screenplay, and Arrival for best adapted screenplay; it was based on the Ted Chiang novella Story of Your Life.”
How Herbert Blomstedt Keeps Up His Busy Conducting Schedule At 90
“Some journalists want me, of course, to say it’s because I never smoked, or because I’m a vegetarian, or because I keep the Sabbath.” [Blomstedt is a Seventh-Day Adventist.] “But that’s not the reason. …. Churchill drank lots of whiskey and smoked enormous big cigars, and he lived to be 90 or so.”
A ‘Rescue Mission’ To See If Anything Can Be Rescued After ISIS’s Destruction Of Nimrud
“An Iraqi archaeologist who was recently given emergency training by the British Museum is leading a rescue operation in Nimrud, the Assyrian site which was almost totally destroyed by [ISIS] extremists. The archaeologist has been appointed by Iraq’s State Board of Antiquities and Heritage to investigate the damage and stablise what can be saved.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 02.20.17
On Entrepreneurialism and Publicness (or Whose Theatre Is It, Really?)
I was disquieted when I encountered [Richard Swedberg’s] discussion of cultural entrepreneurship a few years ago; however, it took completing a case study on the Margo Jones Theatre last year for me to identify the source of my unease. … read more
AJBlog: Jumper Published 2017-02-20
The president who hated Marcel Duchamp
A historian friend of mine reminded me the other day that Theodore Roosevelt attended and wrote about the 1913 Armory Show, the first major exhibition of modern art to be held in America. What’s more, … read more
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2017-02-20
PDX Jazz Festival: Heath Bros, Jackson, Ulmer
Jimmy Heath is 90 years old. His kid brother Albert (Tootie) is 80. They don’t act or sound their ages. … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2017-02-20
Larry Coryell Is Gone
Guitarist Larry Coryell died over the weekend in New York City. He was 73. A pioneer of jazz-rock and fusion, throughout his career Coryell was capable of delicacy and softness in guitar … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2017-02-20
Jazz Guitarist Larry Coryell, 73
“Coryell was still performing more than 50 years after his first recordings. He played at New York jazz club Iridium on Friday and Saturday night, and had plans for a summer tour with his fusion group The Eleventh House.”
Simon & Schuster Cancels Yiannopoulos’ Book
“Simon & Schuster received a hefty backlash to their decision to publish Dangerous in the first place, given Yiannopoulos’ history of xenophobia, misogyny, and hate speech. Some critics threatened to boycott the publishing house in response, and Roxane Gay withdrew her upcoming book from the publisher in protest.”
Just Six Months After The Olympics, Rio And Brazil Are A Disaster
“The budget disaster in Rio could be attributed to many factors, such as the fall in the oil prices, the expansion of the government payroll and the general recession. But there’s no doubt that reckless spending on the World Cup and the Olympics played a role. The city of Rio will be paying off the debts it amassed for years, while it also now has to maintain the arenas it built.”
MacArthur Foundation Picks Finalists For $100 Million Prize To “Change The World”
“Out of more than 1,900 proposals submitted, the foundation’s judges chose eight with goals that include eliminating river blindness in Nigeria, educating displaced children in countries like Syria, and caring for children in orphanages.”
The Radical Reimagining Of “Who” Shakespeare Was
“It’s no longer controversial to give other authors a share in Shakespeare’s plays—not because he was a front for an aristocrat, as conspiracy theorists since the Victorian era have proposed, but because scholars have come to recognize that writing a play in the sixteenth century was a bit like writing a screenplay today, with many hands revising a company’s product. The New Oxford Shakespeare claims that its algorithms can tease out the work of individual hands—a possibility, although there are reasons to challenge its computational methods.”
Weekly Standard: Artists Have “Weaponized” Art
“Today’s leading artists focus almost singlemindedly on issues of race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and religion. Beauty and truth are not merely subservient to the “identitarian” agenda, they are excised from the conversation altogether. It’s not just that the New Philistines have weaponized art in the service of an aggressive social-engineering campaign; they’ve pulverized it.”