That would be transcription, which is prohibitively expensive to do for every segment but which makes it far easier for potential users to find any given audio piece with a search engine. KQED’s senior vice president for digital partnerships writes about how his station and the Google News Initiative are working to improve automated transcription — and avoid pitfalls like transcribing “Asia Foundation” and “age of foundations” and “misgendered” as “Miss Gendered.” – Google’s The Keyword
What Was ‘The Mona Lisa Of Ancient Egypt’? A Gaggle Of Geese
“Called Meidum Geese, the painting was discovered in the 1800s in the Chapel of Itet at Meidum. Itet was the wife of the vizier Nefermaat, who ruled Egypt from 2610 to 2590 B.C. The powerful couple was able to commission works from the most sought-after artists of the day.” – Artnet
What Happens When Public TV And Radio Stations Combine With Digital News Startups
“The cultures of public media (nonprofit, built around broadcast, sometimes a little sleepy) and digital news startups (often for-profit, built around text, real-time and a little frenetic) are not the most natural media match. Public media outlets — typically the larger and better-financed partner — often enter these deals specifically in hopes of injecting that digital DNA. But the host risks rejecting the transplant if it goes into the process with the wrong attitudes or assumptions about how things will go.” Joshua Benton looks at the pitfalls. – NiemanLab
Texas Ballet Theatre Loses Its Headquarters To Winter Storm
The snow and frigid temperatures that struck Texas in late February caused “a massive water pipe break” at the company’s office/studio complex in Fort Worth. “It is impossible to overstate the damage to the Fort Worth facility,” said management in an email to patrons. “The building will remain inoperable for the near future.” For the time being, TBT has moved operations to its satellite site in Dallas. – CultureMap (Texas)
Writers Are Exposing Sexual Abuse – And Deeply Horrible Attitudes – In France
Why now? “While it is illegal in France for an adult to have sex with a minor under the age of 15, there is no age of consent; if there is no evidence of threats or violence, the adult will not be charged with rape. In 2018 … ministers proposed introducing an age of consent, which has yet to pass. A recent poll estimated that one in 10 French people have been the victim of sexual abuse within the family as children.” But writers, and books, are pushing back. – The Guardian (UK)
How Is The San Francisco Symphony Staying Afloat Right Now? [VIDEO]
“We can make music online and everything, but it’s not the same as being onstage together.” But there are benefits – like practicing in Golden Gate Park, having extra time with kids at home, and filming themselves running in from gardening to perform the William Tell Overture, or performing in a gorilla mask, for an online audience. – KTVU (Oakland)
How Museums Use Consultants To Hide Behind Their Biggest Problems
“Consultants are hired to tell museums the truth,” says Adrienne Horn, the president of Museum Management Consultants and a former executive board member for the American Association of Museums. But a series of missteps and hollow promises from institutions that have relied on third-party advice are bringing new scrutiny to the influx of for-profit strategies in a nonprofit world. – Artnet
London School Of Contemporary Dance Overhauls Everything To Become More Diverse
“The drive to create a more diverse dance curriculum and the aim to harness digital capabilities to prepare graduates for a post-Covid world means the way we teach dance needs to radically change, in order to better prepare graduates for the cultural landscape in which contemporary independent dance artists forge their career and which many of them go on to shape,” said Clare Connor, the Place’s chief executive. – The Stage
Rajie Cook, Who Designed The Pictograms We See Everywhere, Dead At 90
“In 1974 Cook & Shanosky Associates, a design firm started by Mr. Cook and Don Shanosky a few years earlier, won a contract to develop a set of symbols that could be universally understood, and that would efficiently convey the kinds of information people in a public place might need. … The signage the two came up with, 34 pictographs (with others added later), is still in use today.” Later in life, he became an “art activist” making sculptural assemblages. – The New York Times
A New York Times Reporter Tries To Learn ‘Podcast Voice’
Alexis Soloski: “It’s recognizable enough that Portlandia and Saturday Night Live can parody it. It suggests intimacy, a rumpled authenticity. Because if someone were faking it, they would, like, definitely cut out the filler words and upspeak. I mean, right? But the most seemingly unstudied performances are often the result of relentless rehearsal and calculation. So I wanted to know how this podcast voice was done. And I wanted to know if I could do it.” – The New York Times
Podcasting Is Becoming Big Business. Will That Ruin It?
Even as media companies pour billions into the industry, “its formats and business practices are still developing, leading producers, executives and talent to view the medium as akin to television circa 1949: lucrative and uncharted territory with plenty of room for experimentation and flag-planting. … But along with the optimism come worries that big money may stifle the D.I.Y. spirit vital to podcasting’s identity.” – The New York Times
California Lost 175,000 Creative Sector Jobs In 2020
The latest edition of an annual study from the Otis College of Arts & Design found that “the creative economy lost more than 13 percent of its job in California, and more than 25 percent in Los Angeles County.” Two studies on the economic impact of the pandemic from Californians for the Arts are similarly dispiriting. – Artnet
Lincoln Center To Open 10 Outdoor Spaces This Spring
“The broad initiative, known as ‘Restart Stages,’ … [includes] plans for a cabaret-style stage, a dedicated area for families that will feature arts activities for children, rehearsal venues that will be open to the public, an outdoor reading room created in partnership with the New York Library for the Performing Arts and an outdoor space for another kind of Lincoln Center ritual: public school graduations held each spring and summer.” – The New York Times
Major Layoffs Coming At London’s V&A Museum
“Vast cuts at the Victoria and Albert Museum are feared to be imminent, with curators and conservators in the line of fire. … Details of the museum’s ‘recovery strategy’ were briefed to unions on Thursday. Staff are expecting to hear news of redundancies within days. One insider expressed dismay that the curatorial division may have to make 20% cuts.” – The Guardian
Stage Actors In Paris Offer ‘Poetic Consultations’ By Phone
“‘I am calling you for a poetic consultation,’ said a warm voice on the telephone. ‘It all starts with a very simple question: How are you?’ Since March, almost 15,000 people around the world have received a call like this. These conversations with actors, who offer a one-on-one chat before reading a poem selected for the recipient, started as a lockdown initiative by a prominent Paris playhouse, the Théâtre de la Ville, in order to keep its artists working while stages remained dark.” – The New York Times