“The best thing conservatories can do is to graduate healthy, intact people with a sense of agency over their careers and lives. The whole Svengali thing has to be held in check, because universities have ways of burying those bad experiences and boards don’t want to hear it.”
What Does Isabelle Huppert Think About While She’s Acting? Nothing
“In fact, when I act I don’t think about anything. My acting depends on the staging: you know, you put the camera in front of me, and I do it.”
You Can’t Handle The Truth: Reality Is *Nothing* Like What We Experience With Our Senses, Argues Cognitive Scientist
“Sure, when we stop and think about it, we realize with a jolt that what we perceive is never the world directly, but rather our brain’s best guess at what that world is like … Still, we bank on the fact that our simulation is a reasonably decent one. If it wasn’t, wouldn’t evolution have weeded us out by now?” Rather the opposite, says Donald Hoffman: humans evolved as we did because our brains couldn’t process the world as it is (or not all of it).
Over Decades, The New Yorker Rejected Hundreds Of Eileen Myles’ Poems. Until One Day They Didn’t
“Did I stop there. Uh uh. I think because I grew up in an alcoholic household and I was suspending belief so often as a child just to survive that it now felt like a bicep flex.”
How Identity Politics Conquered The Art World: An Oral History
Jerry Saltz and Rachel Corbett collect the testimony and assemble a timeline – with, at its center, the still-notorious 1993 Whitney Biennial.
A Brief History Of Harriet Tubman In American Pop Culture
She’s been depicted in portraits and statues, served as a hero of folk tales and an icon of civil rights and feminism, made into a parody Barbie doll, and even helped Abraham Lincoln slay vampires. Now she’s going to join Lincoln in the ultimate domain of dead white males – on American money.
The Tech Behind Bitcoin May Be About To Change Everything
Dominic Frisby explains blockchain technology – and argues that it will likely revolutionize not only cash purchases, but also document authentication, land title and ownership, contract law, and even elections.
What *Really* Goes On Behind The Scenes At Medieval Times
“At Atlas Obscura, we write about places, people, and phenomena that engender wonder and delight. Usually that’s stuff like bone churches, hidden beaches, and abandoned amusement parks. But what qualifies as ‘wondrous’ depends on so many things.”
Guy Hamilton, 93, Director Known For James Bond Films
“The film-maker worked with Sean Connery on Goldfinger and Diamonds are Forever and Roger Moore on Live and Let Die and The Man with the Golden Gun. … He [slao] worked with Michael Caine on Battle of Britain and the Harry Palmer thriller Funeral in Berlin and with Harrison Ford on the 1978 adaptation of Force 10 from Navarone.”
Five Years A Slave: When Cervantes Was Captured By Pirates (He Never Got Over It)
“In 1575, after fighting in military campaigns against the Turks in the Mediterranean, the Spaniard was captured by Barbary pirates and taken to Algiers. There, he was kept as a slave for five years. … Cervantes told and retold his own account of enslavement: in plays, poetry and novellas … [and in] the tale told by a captive in Part 1 of Don Quixote.”
The Rise And Rise Of Pirate Libraries (And No, That Doesn’t Mean Collections Of Books About Buccaneers)
“All around the world, shadow libraries keep growing, filled with banned materials. But no actual papers trade hands: everything is digital, and the internet-accessible content is not banned for shocking content so much as that modern crime, copyright infringement. But for the people who run the world’s pirate libraries, their goals are no less ambitious for their work’s illicit nature.”
Cindy Sherman Is Sick Of Photography And Might Just Head For The Movies
“Back in 1999, Ms. Sherman insisted that ‘I’m under so many layers of makeup that I’m trying to obliterate myself in the images. I’m not revealing anything.’ Now she admits to a more ‘personal aspect’ in her images of aging stars: ‘I, as an older woman, am struggling with the idea of being an older woman.'”
Portland’s Contemporary Art Nomads Get A Huge New Rent-Free Home
“‘We’re moving into a space and not having a capital campaign,’ said Ethan Seltzer, PICA’s board president and a professor of urban studies and planning at Portland State University. ‘This is mind-blowing.'”
An Ambitious Plan For A Children’s Lit Museum In Kansas City
“Few people realize that children’s literature has a canon, like music or dance. The superstore model and then the Internet model have destroyed publishers’ backlists. Whether it’s the ‘Little House’ books or ‘The Story About Ping’ and ‘The Five Chinese Brothers,’ there are thousands of classics that are not being connected back to the culture. We want to renew and revive and regenerate older titles.”
Looks Like Spain Might Not Be As Invested In Cervantes’ 400th Death Day As Fans Would Like
“On a recent visit, a guide told his group that Cervantes would have been better honored had he lived in London instead of Madrid, even though he lived in the same district of the city, aptly known as the Barrio de Las Letras (the literary quarter), as several other writers of the so-called Spanish Golden Age.”
When Algorithms Choose Your Music For You, Something Is Being Lost
“I do feel that if the great push of the smartest minds in this business is moving towards efficiency in curating for you, in delivering you what it knows you will like from the great abundance, well, something’s being lost, isn’t it? Isn’t the thing that’s being lost you and your efforts to figure out what you like and you respond to?”
Research: Men Who Are Good Storytellers Are More Attractive Mates
“Storytelling ability appears to increase (a man’s) perceived status, and thus helps men attract long-term partners.”
Playing The Queen: The Tricks To Portraying Elizabeth II On Stage And Screen
“What is it like to play one of the most famous faces in the world – and what makes so many want to do so? … Two who have done exactly that on stage say there is one crucial element for getting into character …”
Scenes From Antony Sher’s Falstaff Diaries
“Tuesday 10 September – ‘How do you learn all those lines?’ This question is the one that the public most frequently ask of actors. We laugh about it, laugh at them for being so shallow – as though learning lines were the great mystery in acting. Well, I’ve stopped laughing. It’s an age thing.”
Bach With Beer: Two Critics Assess A Bar Concert
“Peter Dobrin: The Baroque cello, with its sheep and cow gut strings, is a pretty quiet instrument. Did it come across for you? And was this your first non-vegan cello experience?
Samantha Melamed: It was my first, ahem, visceral cello experience.”
Prince Was So Ferocious About His Intellectual Property, He Got A ‘Lifetime Aggrievement Award’
“In 2013, the Electronic Frontier Foundation gave Prince … the Raspberry Beret Lifetime Aggrievement Award, in honor of his groundbreaking use of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to prevent fans of his music from publishing his tunes or image anywhere he didn’t want them to be. … For all the groundbreaking work he created as a musician in the 20th century, his approach to the internet and copyright was shockingly old-school, and one that should be studied for centuries after his passing.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 04.21.16
This Week in Audience (04.17.16)
My Audience, My Computer: Scientists fed images of all of Rembrandt’s paintings into a database then had the computer create a “next” Rembrandt based on the artist’s style. You can think… … read more
AJBlog: AJ Arts Audience Published 2016-04-21
Today in Museum Accounting: Financial Windfall at MoMA, Shortfall at the Met
The contrast in the financial news emanating today from New York’s two premier art museums could not have been more dramatic. The Museum of Modern Art issued an exultant press release celebrating David Geffen‘s $100-million … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2016-04-21
Stan Levey And “Bebop”
Several readers who responded to Monday’s Stan Levey book recommendation singled out his work on “Bebop” as one of the greatest modern jazz drum performances. They will get no argument here. Samples: I’m thrilled every … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2016-04-21
Replay: Vladimir Nabokov on the covers of Lolita
Vladimir Nabokov talks about the covers of different editions of Lolita on USA: The Novel. This episode was originally telecast on WNET on February 3, 1965. … read more
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2016-04-21
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Ranking: Adele Is Now The Richest UK Musician Ever
“A list of the top 50 music millionaires in the UK and Ireland puts the singer’s £85m fortune in 30th place – an increase of £35m compared to last year. The only female singer with a bigger fortune on the list – which also covers Ireland – is Irishwoman Enya on £91m.”
Ukraine Bans Russian Movies. And TV. And Cultural Figures
“They have barred each other’s main TV channels on their territory. Ukraine has blacklisted 83 cultural figures, most of them Russian, whom it considers a national security threat. Those on the list – barred from visiting Ukraine – mostly support Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the pro-Russian insurgency in eastern Ukraine.”
After Margaret Cho Bombs At A Club, A Comedy God Gets Her A Second Chance
Thus spake the deity: “So as I was talking with Margaret about this show last week …, we started wondering, wouldn’t it be something if we could go back to New Jersey, back to that club with the same audience and try to make things right? Have a discussion where both sides – comedian and audience – could talk about what happened? And then both of us could do a show – a sort of redo for the audience?”