This has serious consequences for what ought to be the primary function of high school study: developing a love of reading that will last a lifetime. This is next to impossible when your major contact with literature is a guy from the 1500s who wrote with a quill in what might as well be a second language. And when your teachers aren’t theatre people who can bring the works from page to stage, for which they were intended and where they shine. – The Walrus
Latvia’s Huge Body Of Traditional Poetry Is Finally Appearing in English
The verses, typically four lines long and metrical, are called daina. Thanks to an effort to transcribe them in the 19th and 20th centuries, there are now about a million of them collected at the national library in Riga. “Aficionados say this canon of folk poems is as significant as any body of classical literature. … For the past 22 years, Ieva Szentivanyi has been rendering dainas into English. Her first volume was published in 2018 and the second is ready for the press.” – The Economist
Does The Identity Of A Translator Matter?
Lawrence Venuti’s watershed book, The Translator’s Invisibility (1995), argued that the practice of ignoring the identity of the translator, to the point of being in denial that a work was even a translation at all, was part of an unhelpful hierarchical mindset that erroneously attributed absolute value to the original, ignoring the fact that each new translation was itself a new work of art. – New York Review of Books
While We Wait For The Oscars, Ranking The Best Picture Nominees From The Past Five Years
With 43 to choose from, which movie will win? And which one can best be described as “self-conscious Scorsese imitation”? – Los Angeles Times
AI Pioneer: People Are Mistaking What Ai Is
“People are getting confused about the meaning of AI in discussions of technology trends—that there is some kind of intelligent thought in computers that is responsible for the progress and which is competing with humans,” he says. “We don’t have that, but people are talking as if we do.” – IEEE Spectrum
Authenticity As An Ideal? Really?
Is authenticity fading away as a personal ethic or is it something everyone wants to be? In fact, both are true – because the meaning of authenticity is changing. – Psyche
Reckoning: The Treatment Of Women In Ballet
Ballet is often seen as the glorification of women -but, wherever it stands now, it condoned and encouraged the sexual trafficking of women for most of its history: a factor to which no history of ballet has given enough attention. – Alastair Macaulay
She Was The First Englishwoman Ever To Earn A Living Writing. She Was Also A Spy.
She traveled to the Low Countries and Suriname on missions for King Charles II, and she took up writing to support herself because he never paid her. She went on to become one of Restoration London’s most popular, and most controversial, playwrights and poets, using her work to argue against slavery and forced marriage and for women’s right to sexual pleasure. Here is the story of Aphra Behn. – Narratively
‘Follies’ At 50: Why Sondheim’s Musical May Be The Most Important Flop Ever To Run On Broadway
“It was supposed to be a murder mystery: two couples, four motives, one gun. What it became was a different kind of mystery entirely: a musical that got prominent pans, alienated much of its audience and lost most of its investment — yet survived. Not only is Follies, which opened on Broadway on April 4, 1971, still here 50 years later, trailing a string of revivals, revisals and gala concerts, but it is also now recognized as the high-water mark of the serious ‘concept’ musical.” Jesse Green offers seven reasons (and one caveat) why Follies still matters. – The New York Times
UK Theatre Returns To Stages, Having Learned Some Things During Lockdown
Shakespeare’s Globe has announced a mid-May reopening, albeit with a capacity of up to only 500 in a popular auditorium that can hold as many as 1,700. The coveted standing places that allow the so-called Globe groundlings to jostle one another, and on occasion the actors, will be replaced by seats; a lack of intermissions will further limit unwanted contact. The idea is to return to normal practice, assuming restrictions ease as the summer season continues. – The New York Times
Experimental Film Captures Dance In The Wild
“We were demonstrating that we were still there, that we were still dancing, that we still wanted to dance, that we were still those people that engage in practices that are not Zoom-able, and that the things that we offer the world are not essential. We’re demonstrating that our bodies are these things that are meaty and fleshy and sweaty and vulnerable. And we’re continuing to demonstrate why we need to be in each other’s presence.” – Columbus Live
Big Claims For The Kind Of Art AI Will Make
Miller argues that AI-fueled art gains independence from its algorithmic parents and takes flight in works that bear the hallmarks of creativity and genius and will one day exceed human artists’ wildest imaginative dreams. Miller says he sympathizes with what I’m saying about the power of art coming from the connection with a human artist, plumbing their emotions and consciousness. But I’m being premature. Just wait, he says, computers will one day produce art as transcendent as the works of Beethoven and Picasso were in their times. – Nautilus
In Search Of Classical Music From Africa
Cellist Julian Lloyd Webber writes about his colleague Rebeca Omordia, a pianist of Romanian and Nigerian parentage who, since 2013, has been pursuing a project to find and present music by African composers working in Western classical genres. She’s found more than 200 of them, and she presents their work every year in a concert series in London. – The Guardian
Now Clear: How Brexit Is A Disaster For UK Artists
“It is being slightly masked by Covid, but we are already seeing individuals losing their jobs because they don’t hold an EU passport. People are being told their application for a post is not welcome anymore, or that gigs are being postponed or cancelled because EU promoters are not certain whether British talent will be able to make it across the channel.” – The Stage
How Big New Money Is Ripping Up The Art Market
The traditional hierarchies of the art market, where values, both monetary and aesthetic, were established and policed by art historians, curators and museums, are being assaulted by a new breed of wealthy new players, with new tastes and “new” money. Their wallets are stuffed with the currently surging cryptocurrencies. The traditional art world may sniff at some of their choices—but they don’t give a stuff. – The Art Newspaper
What If Elena Ferrante Is Really A Man?
Over the past few years, a series of stylometric analyses, employing both human brains and AI software, has found that the true identity of the famously pseudonymous and reclusive author is almost certainly that of writer Domenico Starnone. (The other prime candidate, identified by an investigative journalist in The New York Review of Books, is Starnone’s wife, translator Anita Raja.) Comparative literature scholar Elisa Sotgiu revisits those studies and how they came to their conclusion, and she considers to what extent the gender of the individual (or, perhaps, couple) behind Elena Ferrante is genuinely important. – Literary Hub
London’s National Gallery Creates First Exhibition Designed For Mobile Phones
The mobile experience will allow people to zoom in on the details. It will include six poems in the voice of Balthasar, the black king pictured to the left of Mary, with his gift of myrrh and wearing a lynx-fur-lined red robe and fabulous boots with leather so fine you can see his toes. – The Guardian
Is The Corps De Ballet Going To Become A Relic Of The Past?
In most places, the pandemic has put a stop to large-scale corps dancing. Yet, even when the virus is finally under control, there’s reason to wonder about the future of large groups of ballet dancers beyond revivals of old classics: few contemporary choreographers make use of more than small groups. Laura Cappelle looks at why that is and why it matters. – Pointe Magazine
Smithsonian Holds Off On Reopening Its Museums
“Despite the reopening of most private museums in Washington, the Smithsonian and the National Gallery of Art have no set date to reopen from pandemic-related closures that began in November. … When they are ready to reopen this spring, they will mimic last summer’s multiphased approach, [Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie] Bunch said, with the National Zoo one of the first to come back. The phased reopening will be faster than last time, when it took two months to open eight sites.” – The Washington Post
Live-Streamed Stand-Up Comedy Might Just Outlast The Pandemic
“Many are skeptical, including fans who badly miss being surrounded by echoing laughter and stand-ups who are exhausted by performing for screens and who widely prefer telling jokes in the same room as crowds. While conceding that nothing replaces the traditional comedy format, [the CEO of the largest digital comedy club] said the doubts will look as shortsighted as early mockery of Twitter, podcasting and so many other now common internet forms. She has good reason for such swagger.” – The New York Times
France Gets Another Nationwide Lockdown, But Arts Venues Could Open By Mid-May
With COVID caseloads on the rise again, President Macron announced a new set of restrictions, less strict than the first set introduced last year, running April 3 to at least May 2. He also said his office is preparing a timetable for “certain” cultural venues to accept visitors again, a process he hopes will start in mid-May, pandemic conditions permitting. – Deadline
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; Robert Ashley, an innovator in opera; Terry Riley, a progenitor of Minimalism; the influential composer and improviser Anthony Braxton; James Fei, a saxophonist and clarinetist who works with electronic sounds; and Maggi Payne, a longtime director of the Center for Contemporary Music, Mills’s laboratory for electronic work since the 1960s, when Oliveros was its first leader. – The New York Times
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.” – The Guardian
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 in understanding that assumptions, half-truths, and misrepresentations about how Facebook works can take root. – Medium