“Given the public awareness that science can be low-quality or corrupted, that whole fields can be misdirected for decades (see nutrition, on cholesterol and sugar), and that some basic fields must progress in the absence of any prospect of empirical testing (string theory), the naïve realism of previous generations becomes quite Medieval in its irrelevance to present realities.”
Claudio Abbado’s Orchestra Mozart Is Relaunching After Three Years Of Silence
Bernard Haitink will conduct a concert at Bologna’s Auditorium Manzoni [on] 6 January 2017… The ensemble, created in Bologna by Claudio Abbado in 2004, stopped playing in 2014 due to a combination of Abbado’s ill health and Italian government spending cuts.”
UK To Increase Funding For British Arts In Other Countries
“The British Council is hoping to double the amount of UK arts activity taking place internationally with a refreshed global arts strategy and increased budget.”
Massive Unknown Monument Discovered ‘Hiding In Plain Sight’ In Petra
“Archaeologists … used high-resolution satellite imagery followed by aerial drone photography and ground surveys to locate and document the structure. They report that the monument is roughly as long as an Olympic-size swimming pool and twice as wide. It sits only about half a mile (800 meters) south of the center of the ancient city.”
The 50 Best Foreign Language Movies Of The 21st Century So Far
“To spread the love, we’ve stuck to one movie per director, and don’t take the absence of documentaries as anything but a promise that they’ll have their own Best of the Century list soon. Those are about the only rules we had, and other than that anything predominately in a language other than English qualified.”
Big Changes Coming To Your Traditional TV Services
The backlash from US pay-TV services likely stems from already declining pay-TV revenue in North America. It is expected to fall by US$13.5 billion over the next five years. Removing set-top box rental revenue to pave the way for competitors like Google, Apple and Tivo, will only add to this decline.
How Listening To Language Shapes A Baby’s Brain
Very young infants tune in to the natural melodies carried in the lilting stream of language. These melodies are especially compelling in ‘motherese’, the singsong patterns that we tend to adopt spontaneously when we speak to infants and young children. Gradually, as infants begin to tease out distinct words and phrases, they tune in not only to the melody, but also to the meaning of the message.
Words As A Technology (And Why We Feared Them)
“In the real world, the dawn of the written word incited the same kinds of anxieties that accompany any new technology that reorders people’s relationship with information. Socrates worried that writing would destroy human memory. And, indeed, the oral tradition was, across many cultures, upended by print. In the Victorian era, people were cautioned that reading fiction would make their minds atrophy. The telegraph, telephone, television, and internet, among other technologies, have all prompted similar concerns about how technology might destroy intellectual rigor.”
After A 50-Year Wait, Christo Sees One Of His Projects Built
“For 30 years, Bulgarian-born artist Christo has wanted to build a monumental ‘Mastaba’ – a type of ancient Egyptian tomb – out of oil barrels in the desert of Abu Dhabi. His project has just materialised on a smaller yet still impressive scale: nine meters high, 17 meters long and nine meters wide, the work is on display at the Fondation Maeght, a museum of modern art in the south of France.”
The Multisensory Approach To Art – How Museums Make Themselves Accessible To The Blind
“Their aim is to use touch and smell in addition to language to elicit the same emotions for blind visitors that others have when they view works by Bourgeois or Dalí or Monet” – for instance, the softness of cotton balls (Monet), the viscosity of a silicone breast implant (Dalí)
An ‘Irish Black Comedy’ Wins 2016 Baileys Women’s Prize For Fiction
“Lisa McInerney, who started her career as a writer with a blog about life on a council estate in the ‘Arse End of Ireland’, has won the Baileys women’s prize for fiction with her debut novel” – The Glorious Heresies – “beating Man Booker winner Anne Enright [The Gathering] and bestseller Hanya Yanagihara [A Little Life] to the £30,000 award.”
Misty Copeland’s Not The Only Ballerina Fighting The Good Fight For Diversity
“It wasn’t until later in her ballet career that Lia Cirio began to suspect that people had their doubts that a half-Filipino ballerina could be a Clara or Sleeping Beauty. While the Boston Ballet employs 69 dancers of 20 different nationalities, she still sees the need to prove herself on stage with each performance.”
“Cultural Catastrophe”: A Paris Museum That Flooded
Closed for the past four years due to ongoing renovations, the Musée Girodet was set to reopen next year but will have to push back that date due to the flood, which Montargis Mayor Jean-Pierre Door described as a “cultural catastrophe.” The museum’s building sits at the center of a narrow strip of land bordered by the Loing river and a canal, but during the renovations most of its collection has been stored off-site, even closer to the water, in the underground vault of a former bank.
How The Hawaiian Language Is Coming Back From Near-Death
“[There’s now a network of] public language-immersion schools where subjects are taught in Hawaiian until about fifth grade, at which point English is gradually introduced. Designed to revive the fading language, these institutions began spreading across the state three decades ago, resulting in what many consider the most successful revival of an indigenous language in North America.”
Artist Tries To Burn Down HQ Of Russia’s Secret Service And Says It’s “Art”
Petr Pavlensky told the crowd that they are living in a society controlled through “uninterrupted terror”, that surveillance in Russia is on the rise but that people’s own fear is making them prisoners. That was the stark message the artist wanted to send when he conceived “Threat” and selected the headquarters of Russia’s powerful security service, the FSB, as his canvas – or target.
Byron’s Friends Destroyed His Memoir. What Were They Hiding?
“Byron’s memoirs – which might have finally provided the “truth” about his life – were destroyed soon after his death. The story goes that three of his closest friends (his publisher, John Murray; his fellow celebrity poet, Thomas Moore; and his companion since his Cambridge days, John Cam Hobhouse), together with lawyers representing Byron’s half-sister and his widow, decided that the manuscript was so scandalous, so unsuitable for public consumption, that it would ruin Byron’s reputation forever… What was the damning secret his friends needed to protect? Domestic abuse? Sodomy? Incest? Probably all three, we imagine.”
How Charity Auctions Take Advantage Of Artists
The seismographic range of institutions, causes, and charities staging sales creates a constant barrage for artists. “It’s a side business keeping up with all the auctions,” said Simmons, who gave away 16 works last year. “It takes an amazing amount of, for lack of a better word, administrative time. It’s very hard to keep it all going.” Artist Marilyn Minter said she receives requests for donations every week. Rob Pruitt fields about 20 solicitations a year.
How Shakespeare Grappled With The Issues And Why He Still Resonates
Even though our values have evolved in crucial areas beyond those of Shakespeare’s era, we can talk back to the plays because they talk back to themselves. Whether it’s sexism in “The Taming of the Shrew,” racism in “Othello,” anti-Semitism in “The Merchant of Venice” or colonialism in “The Tempest,” it is hard to find a point of view that Shakespeare hasn’t already anticipated and embodied.
You Can’t Have Free Will Without Regret
“This is the very essence of regret – we can only regret things we think we have control over. If we had no choice, no agency, if we were but tossed about on the tides of fate, there’d be nothing to regret. And so, regret ends up being the emotional price we pay for free will.”
The (Real) Abuse And (Real) Psychopath Onstage (And No One Said Anything)
The reason Killer Joe felt so vicious and so real was because it was. All of it: the choking, the bruises, the deep-throating of a chicken leg, the body slam into the refrigerator, Cox’s groping of Wellin through her dress as Joe attempts to seduce Dottie, Cox’s semi-erection at the beginning of Act II after Joe succeeds. “It was real,” says Darcy McGill, the costume designer, “because there was a psychopath onstage.”
Which Shows Get Binge-Watched The Most? Netflix Investigates
Using what it calls the “binge scale” – with “shows to savor” on one end and “shows to devour” on the other – Netflix “said viewers typically binged on thrillers such as Breaking Bad and The Killing, but were more likely to take their time over the more political narratives of House of Cards or Homeland.”
The Man Who Invented The World Wide Web Thinks It Needs To Be Reinvented
Tim Berners-Lee: “It controls what people see, creates mechanisms for how people interact. It’s been great, but spying, blocking sites, repurposing people’s content, taking you to the wrong websites – that completely undermines the spirit of helping people create.” So this week Berners-Lee met with a group of his peers to consider ways to create a Web that’s less centralized and less subject to control by governments and corporations.
North America’s Mostly White Orchestra World Gets Together To Talk Diversity
“The League of American Orchestras, representing a mostly white industry, opens a three-day national conference Thursday in a majority African-American city at a time of increased racial tensions and heightened awareness of economic and educational disadvantages. The principal topic of the 2016 gathering in Baltimore: diversity.”
Sexual Harassment In The Theater, And How Chicago’s Theater Community Is Combating It
“Auditions are tough, and casting directors may be unwilling to hire a so-called ‘problematic’ actor when there are so many talented people in line for the job. If you’re worried that one complaint could stall your career, you’re not alone. The dynamics of power persist from one type of performance to another, and we can learn from what happened in Chicago.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 06.08.16
Not so much power?
I’ve read some things about what Yannick might do as the Met’s music director, when finally he starts that job. … In some of what I’ve read, there seems to be an assumption that Yannick will have a lot of power. … read more
AJBlog: Sandow Published 2016-06-08
Warhol Damaged, von Rydingsvard Caressed: My Storify on Unexpected Encounters at the New SFMOMA
As you’ve probably guessed if you follow my Twitter feed, I’ve neglected the blog because I’ve been traveling in the San Francisco area, where I spent two rewarding, if exhausting, days (Friday and Monday) … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2016-06-08
MoMA’s Hidden ‘Electro-Library’ Show
It’s only a couple of vitrines, and they seem like overflow storage — as though they’ve been placed out of the way in the downstairs mezzanine of the Museum of Modern Art’s education building … read more
AJBlog: Straight|Up Published 2016-06-08
Black and white and gray all over
Twitter, like the world itself, is populated partly by thoughtful, open-minded people and partly by knee-jerking robots of flesh and blood who are incapable of reacting other than automatically and reflexively to the external stimuli …read more
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2016-06-08
Bach on the Piano
I have a good friend who’s a magnificent pianist, maybe sixty years old. Some years ago, my friend remarked: “You know, when we were young, there were a lot of major pianists. … They were all different, of course. But in every case you could understand why they were major pianists.” “Except for Pollini,” I said. “Except for Pollini,” he agreed. “Nowadays,” my friend continued, “anyone can be a ‘great pianist.’” read more
AJBlog: Unanswered Question Published 2016-06-08
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