“A new field of research aims to deepen, and even quantify, our understanding of this intangible quality. Inherently interdisciplinary, visual stylometry uses computational and statistical methods to calculate and compare these underlying image features in ways humans never could before. Instead of relying only on what our senses perceive, we can use these mathematical techniques to discover novel insights into artists and artworks.”
Have Our Book Critics Gone Soft? (What Happens When “Every” Book Is Worth Reading?)
“Nearly all of the more than 100 books graded by Book Marks seem to be worth reading, which renders it somewhat useless as a recommendation resource, which wasn’t lost on many of its early readers. But that’s not how Lit Hub editor-in-chief Jonny Diamond pitches the site anyway.”
This Broadway Season, The Diversity Wasn’t Only Onstage
“It’s hard for us to get any attention. A lot of people ask, ‘Where are the designers of color?’ And I always say, ‘We’re out there! We’re just as busy as other designers!’ But we work behind the scenes, so we can’t get as much attention as the people onstage.”
A Ballet School In Nigeria
Sarah Boulos, a Lebanese-Nigerian dancer and teacher, has been teaching pliés and pointe work for a dozen years in Lagos. (video)
Just-Discovered Ruins Will Be Incorporated Into Rome’s New Subway Line
“Rome will have what city officials are calling its first ‘archaeological station’ after a construction team recently uncovered 2nd-century CE Roman barracks during ongoing work on the city’s third metro line.”
How The Young Ernest Hemingway Invented ‘Ernest Hemingway’
“When it came to selling copy, Hemingway was one of America’s most versatile leading men, and certainly one of the country’s most fascinating entertainers. By then, everyone had long forgotten one of his earliest roles: unpublished nobody. It was one of the few Hemingway personas that never really suited him. In fact, in the early 1920s – strapped for cash, ravenous for recognition – he was frantic to rid himself of it.”
History Of Minorities Is Missing In American Schools. Can Theatre Help?
“It’s not like brown and non-white faces appeared on the scene recently. It’s been there for a while and it’s been part of the building of this country, which is similar to the point of Hamilton. You’re part of America, you’re part of the history.”
Hollywood’s Box Office Crisis
“What’s really happening? How did Hollywood become overrun with sequels, and why does it suddenly seems as if nobody wants to see them? The short answer is that the movie industry has over-learned the lesson that sequels perform well at the box office and has tried to sequelize every marginally successful movie. The deeper answer is that, on top of long-term structural declines in movie attendance, Hollywood is losing its grip on young people.”
First Time In 70 Years: Edinburgh Festival Offers Fewer Shows
“The 1.3 per cent drop is also mirrored in a six per cent slide in the number of Fringe venues this summer, when the event will go head-to-head with the Rio Olympics. Fringe organisers said the drop in the number of shows was down to a number of site-specific venues not reappearing this year and a decision not to include events in its own headquarters.”
A Rotten Tomatoes For Books
“Book Marks will showcase critics from the most important and active outlets of literary journalism in America, aggregating reviews from over 70 sources – newspapers, magazines, and websites – and averaging them into a letter grade, as well as linking back to their source.”
Why Curators? We’ve Become Irrelevant And Self-Delusional
“Once as curators we were preaching to the converted. Whoever dared to say that an empty shoe box in a museum was a joke was considered an imbecile. Today if you are not able as a curator to articulate in a comprehensible language why the shoe box is a masterpiece YOU are the imbecile. So I don’t think it is the fault of the audience if they reject certain obscure encrypted exhibitions or works of art.”
‘Everything In Moderation’ Is Actually Useless Advice
“It’s an instruction so vague as to be fundamentally unhelpful. And in the absence of any standard measure, we’re each left to our own devices to figure out what moderation actually means. Which isn’t really a great strategy.”
Disney’s Doing Three Different Stage Versions Of ‘Frozen’
“Keeping all the efforts untangled can be challenging. Is the theme park show a miniversion of the Broadway one? What about the Disney Cruise Line production? Here’s what we know about the live-performance versions of Frozen underway.”
Orchestra Musicians Vote Three-To-One Against Renewing Chief Conductor’s Contract
As part of a larger survey distributed by management, the musicians of the Orquestra de València were asked, “Are you in favor, once his current contract expires, that a vote of confidence should be renewed and [Yaron Traub] should continue as conductor of the OV?” Well …
(in Spanish; Google Translate version here)
‘Both Solid Box And Blob’: Bjarke Ingels’s 2016 Serpentine Pavilion
“Viewed side-on, the pavilion is rectangular. But when seen from the front or at an angle, its curving silhouette is revealed. It also changes from opaque to see-through, depending on the viewing angle.”
Serpentine Gallery Erects Four ‘Summer Houses’ To Accompany Pavilion
“Architects Kunlé Adeyemi, Asif Khan, Yona Friedman and Barkow Leibinger … have created structures to reference Queen Caroline’s Temple in Kensington Gardens, designed by architect William Kent in the early 18th century.”
Meryl Streep Does Donald Trump Even Better Than She Did Margaret Thatcher
“She may have already played inspiring political figures like Margaret Thatcher and Emmeline Pankhurst on the big screen, but let’s face it: this is the role of a lifetime. At New York’s Shakespeare in the Park gala on Monday night, Meryl became the Donald.” (includes video clips)
Orlando Ballet And Philharmonic Hire New CEOs
Caroline Miller “becomes the ballet’s seventh leader in five years. The leadership turmoil has been accompanied by significant financial struggles, even as the ballet seeks to raise millions for a new headquarters.” Christopher Barton “replaces veteran leader David Schillhammer, the only executive director the Philharmonic has ever known. The Phil has an unblemished record of balancing its budget but is in the midst of a large fundraising campaign to renovate its new home.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 06.07.16
Are You Getting Enough Bang for Your Buck?
In the National Center for Arts Research’s Edition 3 report on the health of the U.S. arts and cultural sector, we include insights on trends as well as updates on seven performance indices … If we look across two of these indices — Response to Marketing and People per Offering – together they tell a story about supply, demand, and the tension between marketing and engagement. … read more
AJBlog: Engaging Matters Published 2016-06-07
A plan for diversity
in this post: Why diversity means more than simply selling tickets to diverse people. And why that might be impossible to do. And then – most happily – a bigger, more productive way to get diversity. … read more
AJBlog: Sandow Published 2016-06-07
Tuesday Recommendation: Ted Gioia’s New Book
Ted Gioia, How To Listen To Jazz (Basic Books). Opposite the contents page of this concise book is a quote from Duke Ellington: “Listening is the most important thing in music.” It seems an obvious … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2016-06-07
Ten years after: on the giving of prizes to artists
From 2006: Of the giving of prizes there is no end, and it’s hard to think of a single one, however ostensibly prestigious, that hasn’t been devalued by the promiscuity and/or lack of discrimination … read more
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2016-06-07
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Sydney Theatre Company At A Crossroads
With such momentous, truly original works that cut to Australian identity, greatness walks the stage of the STC, which was formed in 1978 and generated $38.3m in revenue last year. But now the company is scrambling to complete the programming of Jonathan Church’s unfinished 2017 season, to be announced early September, only after which the board will start looking for his replacement.
You Binge-Watch TV So Maybe Now You’ll Binge-Read Books (One Publisher’s Bet)
“Farrar Straus and Giroux believes the TV model can lend momentum to a book series. In a move that takes as much from Victorian novels as from limited-run Netflix series, the publisher’s FSG Originals imprint is experimenting with serialized fiction.”
How The Internet Is Shaping Our Aesthetic Experiences
“For years technology had seemed to be the masculine form of the word culture. If you wanted to sell men on a culture story, you did well to frame it as a tech story — a story about the plumbing or stock price of Netflix rather than a story about the pixels that constitute ‘Bloodline.’ Technology is built stuff that aims to be elegant and engaging. Apps are founded on science in the same sense that a watercolor is founded on science, where the chemistry of pigments and the physics of brush strokes are the science. But the resulting painting, if successful, hints at transcendence or at least luminous silence, something whereof we cannot speak.”
What Walter Benjamin Read
“The small black notebook catalogues Benjamin’s reading from the age of 22 in 1917 until 1939, shortly before he left Paris fleeing from the Nazis. It begins with number 462—earlier entries are lost—and ends with number 1712, Robert Hichens’ Le Toque noire. Putting to shame the more leisurely reader, Benjamin was averaging more than one book a week.”
Thais And Cambodians Start Social Media War Over Traditional Dance
“In a drama of epic proportions, Thailand and Cambodia are feuding once again after simultaneously claiming ownership of the traditional elaborate masked dance known as Khon in Thailand and Khol in Cambodia.”
Lin-Manuel Miranda: Ticket Bots Are Ruining Broadway
“The markup on resale tickets is so lucrative, earning brokers millions of dollars per year, that they happily risk prosecution and treat civil penalties as the cost of business.”