“In 1906, he unveiled this idea to the IOC: the Olympic Games should include gold, silver and bronze medals in five categories of the arts: architecture, literature, music, painting and sculpture. Like sports competitors, the artists participating in the new “Pentathlon of the Muses” were supposed to be amateurs.”
Anton Chekhov, Experimental Post-Modernist
“Aside from stories that he was writing in a more traditional form, Chekhov’s young, experimental pen wrote stories in the form of census reports, statistical surveys, diary excerpts, stories in the form of lists of mathematical problems, lonely hearts advertisements, mini-plays – he even wrote a one-page love story in the form of a legal deposition, with a place in the upper left-hand corner of the page for a government stamp.”
Music Has Become Too Disposable. Hence The Slow-Listening Movement
“Why vinyl? Commitment. In this mid-second decade of the 21st century, music is being taken for granted on a collective scale. An entire generation of music listeners will never pay for music, nor do they believe that they should. The long form music medium has taken a back seat to song culture, yet the average person only listens to a song for approximately 24 seconds before deciding if it’s worth their time to continue to listen.”
Chicago’s Baroque Band To Cease Operations
“Garry Clarke, the period-instrument ensemble’s founder and artistic director, had previously announced that he would leave his position at the end of the current season. In a statement posted on the Baroque Band website, board president Evan Trent said the board voted unanimously to shutter the group after Clarke’s departure.”
To Solve The Most Difficult Problems, Maybe Try Solving Something Else Instead? (It’s Called Lateral Innovation)
“Watching what my colleagues do, and understanding why they do it, has convinced me that brute force alone will not innovate the technologies that will enable human civilisation to become an effective arbiter of this planet and her resources. The solution requires tapping into the same impractical, impatient, passionate drive that spurred the video-game-fuelled GPU revolution. And although that kind of lateral innovation cannot be instituted forcibly, it can be recognised and fostered.”
Another Selfie Disaster: Tourist Climbs Onto And Destroys Statue At Historic Lisbon Train Station
“[A] 24-year-old man climbed onto the pedestal of the stone figure of Dom Sebastião, which stood in a niche flanked by large, ornately decorated horseshoe-shaped arches at [Rossio] station’s Neo-Manueline-style façade.” Of course the statue couldn’t support the man’s weight; it toppled to the ground and shattered.
‘Antiques Roadshow’ Punks Itself, Assessing 1970s High School Art Project As $50,000 1890s Jug
“Owner Alvin Barr had bought the pot, decorated with six beast-like faces, at an estate sale in a barn in Eugene, Oregon, for $300. He was naturally short of breath when Antiques Roadshow’‘s bespectacled expert appraiser Stephen L. Fletcher (specializing in clocks, decorative arts, folk art, and furniture) revealed its alleged market value.”
Today’s Hot Trend In Website Design? ‘Web Brutalism’
“All of these sites – some years old, some built recently – and hundreds more like them, eschew the templated, user-friendly interfaces that has long been the industry’s best practice. Instead they’re built on imperfect, hand-coded HTML and take their design cues from ’90s graphics.
A New Retro Machine For Writing
“The screen isn’t really for staring at like a computer screen, but just for glancing toward to verify a word or to get one’s bearings while writing. While it takes a bit of getting used to, the touch-typist eventually stops looking at the screen entirely, and begins instead to look around the environment. I can’t overstate how liberating this feels.”
When People At Parties Ask Me About Being An Actor, Here’s What I Tell Them
“Your work-life balance will be perfect because there is no distinction between the two. … Get used to early mornings and late nights. There is no luxury of being an owl or a lark. You have to be both, and be fit at all sorts of times of day to produce deep emotions or light-hearted frivolity at the drop of a hat, whatever you actually feel. Ten or 20 times over if required.”
All The Murders And Suicides In Shakespeare, Mashed Up In One Performance
“The show, called The Complete Deaths, aims to re-enact every onstage fatality in the Shakespearean canon: stabbings, smotherings, poisonings, bear attack, being turned into baked goods, the lot.”
Tracking Ideas On Wikipedia Is Like Mapping A Huge Drainage System
“To begin their investigation, the researchers followed the first links from all 11 million pages in the English edition of Wikipedia, enabling them to map out a sort of drainage system of ideas, one idea flowing into the next like water from a mountain spring making its way to the sea.”
Being Afraid Of Artificial Intelligence Killing Or Enslaving Us All Is Like Fearing Monsters In The Dark
Stephen Hawking: “The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.”
Luciano Floridi: “Suppose you enter a dark room in an unknown building. You might panic about monsters that could be lurking in the dark. Or you could just turn on the light, to avoid bumping into furniture.”
Brain Science: Here’s Why You Can (Or Can’t) Feel The Beat When You Dance
“When performing or dancing to music, entrainment allows the timing of upcoming beats to be predicted. A recent study on individual differences in rhythmic skill identified relationships between the strength of neural entrainment and the capacity to synchronise movements with musical rhythms.”
Heavy Dancer With The Moves Out To Change Minds About Dancers’ Bodies
“Hoping to appear on The Ellen Show and music videos, the heavy-set performer says he is trying to ‘change the mind and shape of dancers’. The photographs regularly receive hundreds of likes and he has amassed thousands of followers.”
Japan’s Vagina Artist Gets Split Verdict: Vagina-Shaped Kayak Is Art, But Digital Scan Of Her Vagina Is Smut
Megumi Igarashi – a.k.a. Rokudenashiko (roughly, “Little Miss Good-for-Nothing”) – made headlines worldwide in 2014 when she was arrested for making and showing a kayak modeled on a mold of her private parts. Now a judge has ruled that her bright yellow v-boat, as well as little figurines she sells, are indeed art (and thus protected under law), but distributing files for 3D-printing replicas of her vagina is “distributing obscenity.”
Ballet BC Changes The Conversation On Lack Of Opportunity For Female Choreographers
And the Vancouver-based company isn’t doing it only by commissioning and performing work created by women (which it does). For this company, and for the female choreographers working with it, the issue isn’t even worth discussing.
Ta-Nehisi Coates: I Had To Give Up My Plans To Move Home To Brooklyn Because I Was Doxed By The Real-Estate-Porn Press
“My friend found a house on Lincoln Road. He dubbed it ‘The Dream.’ He told me my wife would love it. She did. I did. … But no one keep secrets in Brooklyn.” (Least of all the seller’s broker, Keith Mack of Corcoran.)
Is Britain’s Government Planning To Kill The BBC Trust And Revoke The Network’s Independence?
“In a few days, the culture secretary John Whittingdale will release a white paper making recommendations for a total overhaul of the way the BBC is run.” Among those recommendations: “The organisation that regulated the BBC, the independent BBC Trust, will be abolished. There will be a new BBC board with a chair and deputy chair appointed directly by the government.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 05.09.16
This Week In Audience 05.08.16, Unintended Consequences Edition
So who exactly is the arts audience, and how and why do they engage? We’ve got some more data. … read more
AJBlog: AJ Arts Audience Published 2016-05-09
JJA Nominations
The Jazz Journalists Association has announced its 2016 awards nominees. … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2016-05-09
“Cautious Optimism,” Depressed Results: Sotheby’s Spins the Art-Market Slump for Analysts
How do you restore investor confidence in a company whose first-quarter results show a net loss of $25.9 million (compared to net income of $5.2 million for the same period the previous year), with … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2016-05-09
Sotheby’s Slump: My Storify from Tonight’s Painful Impressionist/Modern Sale
If Sotheby’s is trying to restore buyer confidence, tonight’s mediocre Impressionist/Modern sale wasn’t the way to do it. Only 66.1% of the works sold, and the sold total by hammer price total was considerably below … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2016-05-09
Monday Recommendation: A Twofer
Kirk MacDonald, Symmetry (Addo)
Oleg Kireyev & Keith Javors, The Meeting (Inarhyme)
The unprecedented double recommendation this week is because both albums … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2016-05-09
[ssba_hide]
This Week in Audience, Unintended Consequences Edition
Some data about what we know about audience engagement in the UK. Is YouTube now a better bet for advertisers, and what does that mean for TV? SFMoMA’s brilliant new app gets closer to the ideal museum companion. What the Met Opera needs to do to attract more ticket buyers (and why that’s difficult to do). And Boaty McBoatface – a cautionary tale in crowdsourcing.
No Surprise: Sotheby’s Posts A First Quarter Loss
“The art world is watching to see whether the tumultuous changes wrought by its president and chief executive, Tad Smith, are paying off.”
Pakistan’s Cross Between Kurt Vonnegut And Anderson Cooper
“As a novelist and a journalist, [Mohammed Hanif] has become perhaps the foremost observer of Pakistan’s contradictions and absurdities.”