In film and TV dramatisations of familiar royal tales, the audience is presented with a romanticised and glamorised vision of royal history. Sumptuous silks and gilded homes make up the lush material world on screen. In reality, they are far removed from the bed bugs, tedious political documents and the stench of recently used chamber pots. – The Conversation
How The Met Opera’s Telemarketing Strategy Backfires On Itself
“Dialing for dollars may be a skill that some sellers of products and services profitably employ. But when it comes to deepening a level of patron loyalty that would get a major cultural institution out of a pandemically induced shutdown, it’s done more harm than good.” – David Rohde
Revisiting TikTok Before It Was TikTok, A Long, Long Time Ago
“From 2014 to 2018, the Chinese app Musical.ly was where kids — as in, literal children and very young teenagers — would lip-sync to 15-second clips of Shawn Mendes and Bebe Rexha songs, or maybe an audio track of a funny Vine. The music played as you recorded; you could slow it down and speed it up and make cuts while filming. That was pretty much the extent of its technical features, and if it sounds like TikTok, that’s because it eventually became TikTok, after it was acquired by another Chinese tech company. But if TikTok is where all the cool kids hang out now, Musical.ly was, well, not.” – Vulture
Research: Livestreaming Has Become A Vital Connection
“Our research has highlighted how important it is for audience members to be able to communicate with, and feel connected to, each other and the musicians performing,” said Co-author Sam Leak, lecturer in Popular Music at Middlesex. “As a performer, this finding is interesting to me not only because it impacts my livestreaming practice, but also because it could well enhance the experience of my audiences in physical venues.” – Ludwig Van
What Our Comparisons Of Humans To Animals Say About Us
Calling a person an animal is usually a comment on their unrestrained appetites, especially for food (‘like a hungry animal’), for sex (‘they went at it like animals’), and for violence (‘they’re like wild animals’). We also have purpose-made insults comparing people to specific kinds of animal: pig, chicken, rat, cow, slug, snake, cockroach, bitch, etc. – Psyche
Interpol Debuts A New App To Track Stolen Art
Last week, the global crime-fighting group debuted a new app that aims to make the process of identifying and reporting stolen works as simple as swiping on a smartphone. After downloading the free app—called ID-Art—users can upload images or input keywords to search for information about specific missing objects. – Smithsonian
Tech Versus Big Journalism
A war is on between the tech titans and a relentless generation of largely digital-native reporters looking to speak truth to power while racking up Twitter followers in the process. Depending on whom you ask, the great Tech vs. Media Standoff of 2020–21 is either a “fake fight” between “20 people and 500 other people,” all quick to take offense and thirsty for clout, or it’s a cataclysmic rift that threatens democracy or, at least, the accurate portrayal of the most important industry in the world. – New York Magazine
SAG/AFTRA Sign First Agreement On Social Media Influencers (What Does That Mean?)
The Screen Actors Guild–American Federation of Television and Radio Artists’ national board voted to adopt its first-ever agreement for influencers—personalities and performers paid to promote products and services on networks like Instagram and TikTok, plus non-networked websites. In addition, those side hustles are no longer prohibited for current members of SAG-AFTRA. – Dance Magazine
Inside The Art NFT Boom
No one quite agrees on what this gold rush means. If you ask hard-core champions of Bitcoin — the often-libertarian “crypto natives,” as they call themselves — NFTs presage the future of digital property. They’re a glimpse at a coming day when people spend their income on digital items they can trade, resell or hoard as an investment; when government will lose its unique power to mint currency and protect property, because people will instead trust the implacable math of blockchain networks. – The New York Times
How A Dallas Choir Made $375,000 With An NFT “Crypto Music”
“2020 had all been about crypto art. We believe that Betty’s Notebook is the birth of crypto music. It makes music truly ‘crypto native’,” meaning the piece is designed and meant for consumption on the blockchain, instead of simply being added to it as a NFT. “You can’t have Betty’s Notebook without the blockchain.” – Dallas Morning News
Dancer StuartHodes @96 – How To Dance Through Life
“I think anything that you do with every particle of yourself can be wonderful, and it can make you forget the world. It’s magic. How the heck am I supposed to describe it? Something happens. It takes everything you have got. And, for that — for those brief moments that you’re dancing, you’re transported.” – The News Hour (PBS)
Chicago’s Goodman Theatre Prepares To Live-Stream From Its Stage
“‘The whole process here is to recreate the experience for the audience,’ said [Goodman artistic director Robert] Falls. ‘The audience chooses which performance they want to see, they buy their ticket, they’re instructed to get there early to make sure that the technology is working and at 7:30 in the evening, we’re all set to go live.'” – Yahoo! (Chicago Tribune)
Can Los Angeles Re-Establish Itself As A Cultural Capital Post-Pandemic?
“In many ways the challenges here are more intense and complex, in no small part because the virus hit at a time when so many things were in flux. The next steps — by cultural institutions, wealthy philanthropists, government and audiences — could well determine whether COVID will have derailed, or merely delayed, the city’s ascendance as a cultural destination.” – The New York Times
Metropolitan Opera Returns To Stage (But Not Its Own) For First Time Since COVID Arrived
“Members of the company’s orchestra and chorus, joined by prominent soloists and led by its music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, will give two concerts at the Knockdown Center in Queens on Sunday. … The concerts will go on despite continuing labor tensions at the Met, which have threatened the intended reopening of its Lincoln Center home in September.” – The New York Times
Phylicia Rashad Named Dean Of Howard University’s New College Of Fine Arts
The award-winning actor, herself a Howard alumna, will be the first dean of the re-established college. The nation’s leading historically Black university folded its fine arts school into its College of Arts and Sciences in 1998 as a cost-cutting measure; Rashad’s arrival completes the return of Howard’s College of Fine Arts as an independent entity. – The Washington Post
Ex-English National Ballet Principal Convicted Of Sexually Assaulting Students
“Yat-Sen Chang attacked girls and women at the English National Ballet and Young Dancers Academy in London between December 2009 and March 2016. The 49-year-old was convicted of 12 counts of sexual assault and one count of assault by penetration. He was cleared of one offence.” – BBC
Disney+ Isn’t Using Show-runners For Its Shows. A New TV Model?
Effectively, the studio is making its TV shows as if they were roughly six-hour movies, applying the same production methodology it’s used for the 23 unprecedentedly successful interconnected feature films that comprise the Marvel Cinematic Universe. That means empowering directors to lead a lot of creative decision-making, in collaboration with a small cadre of hands-on Marvel creative executives who are with the project from the beginning and report up to Feige. – Variety
The Long Checkered Career Of The Golden Globes
Hollywood viewed the awards as meaningless at best and corrupt at worst — most notable for their open bar and the industry perks enjoyed by their some 80 voting members. Jack Mathews, who was a film critic for Newsday, once called them “the best-fed freeloaders in the entertainment industry.” – The New York Times
YouTube Will Spend $100 Million On Creators In New “Shorts” Program
YouTube, the world’s biggest video platform, announced the YouTube Shorts Fund, a $100 million pool of money it’s promising to distribute to creators of the most-engaging clips of its new TikTok-style feature. YouTube expects the program to kick off in the fall of 2021 and continue into 2022. – Variety
West End Theatre Folk Look Eagerly, Nervously Toward Reopening
“What’s it actually like for the theatermakers who are starting work again after 15 months? Has the pandemic shaped the way they think about theater? We visited four” — a director, a producer, an actor and a costumer — “to find out.” – The New York Times