“One could say that capitalism produces greater artistic variation, thereby speeding up aesthetic evolution. But if the species is rapidly evolving toward decadence and possible extinction, then its proliferation of increasingly varied forms of art and music is destined to be short-lived, however ingenious and enjoyable those forms may be.” – Resilience
The Music Of Biology And The Biology Of Music
The argument that there is both an aliveness and a wholeness to organic life which is potentially recognizable to musicians in musical terms has in the past been easier to make for those immersed in the invisible, mycorrhyzal webs of oral traditions than in the architectural solidity of art music, with its notations, institutions, theories and formal pedagogies. But let’s not get stuck in these academic distinctions. – Resilience
How I Learned To Be A Kinder Critic
Josh Kosman: “If you’d asked me at the time, I could have unreeled a fairly high-minded manifesto about the central importance of honesty in criticism. None of it would have been wrong, exactly, but it also wouldn’t have been the whole truth. The rest of it — the part I left unacknowledged, even to myself — was that this philosophy was expressly designed to let me off the hook for whatever harm my writing might cause.” – San Francisco Chronicle
Google’s Plan To Disrupt Education
“College degrees are out of reach for many Americans, and you shouldn’t need a college diploma to have economic security,” writes Kent Walker, senior vice president of global affairs at Google. “We need new, accessible job-training solutions–from enhanced vocational programs to online education–to help America recover and rebuild.” – Inc.
Minneapolis Theatre Looks Into The Future, Decides To Shut Down After One Last Season
The company realized last November that, given the current funding climate, it would not be able to sustain itself beyond the coming year. State and private grant priorities were shifting, Avitabile said, and a few key donors were no longer in a position to give. Rather than go into debt, 20% Theatre will use its last season to celebrate accomplishments. – MPR
Can Reading Fight Racism?
The pandemic changed some things, and then came the murder of George Floyd – and the largest civil rights movement in U.S. history. “Anti-racist manuals have been cleaned out from virtual bookstore shelves and pushed to the top of bestseller lists. And often, these buyers don’t want to read alone. Enter the anti-racist book club.” – BuzzFeed
This Artist’s 2014 Paintings Perfectly Envisage The Pandemic Lockdown
Thuy Van Vu’s empty classrooms feel eerily familiar right now, almost photographic. “The spaces she portrays are vast and full of potential, and also of a great, yawning absence. Where are the children? Their teachers? The chairs are piled awkwardly on top of the desks, everything pushed together, as if those who left were in a rush. There’s a sense that these desks and chairs have been lingering and might never be used again.” – Catapult
Museum Director Who Wouldn’t Certify Belarus Election Found Dead
Kanstantsin Shyshmakou, the 29-year-old director of a military history museum in Vawkavysk, refused to sign anything certifying the re-election of Lukashenko – and was found dead in a river after disappearing. Authorities claim there’s nothing criminal about his death. – KHPG (Ukraine)
No One Is Listening To The Radio, But Everyone Is Listening To NPR
The drivetime listeners are gone, sending NPR’s radio ratings into the sub-sub-basement. Yet NPR is reaching 10 percent more people than at the same time last year. What gives? “Bringing a younger, more diverse audience into the NPR fold means reaching listeners on the platforms they’re already on — whether that’s putting podcasts on Spotify, music on YouTube, or newsy explainers on TikTok. … Executives are putting two and two together from the demographic reports and, bubbling up from the bottom, junior producers and interns want to produce content that their digital-native friends will actually see.” – Nieman Lab
Why A California Motorist’s “NULL” License Plate Set Him Up For $1000s In Tickets
That setup also has a brutal punch line—one that left Joseph Tartaro at one point facing $12,049 of traffic fines wrongly sent his way. He’s still not sure if he’ll be able to renew his auto registration this year without paying someone else’s tickets. And thanks to the Kafkaesque loop he’s caught in, it’s not clear if the citations will ever stop coming. – Wired
Dreamstage – A New Virtual Concert Hall
The design of Dreamstage simulates a traditional live event with virtual ticket offices, an entrance for the audience, artistic entrance, and a post-performance lounge. Ticket proceeds will go to musicians. – The Strad
Reissued Asterix Comics Have An Ugly-Racial-Stereotype Problem
A series of collected strips, in a new English translation, about the funny little Gaul and his fellows resisting the Romans is now being released in the U.S. That’s bringing new attention to an old problem: the way the original artist in the 1960s depicted African slaves. The U.S. publisher wanted to change the drawings, but the rights holder, Hachette France, refused to allow anything but minor cosmetic alterations. – Publishers Weekly
The “Demographic Bias” Built Into The Machine
Recent studies from the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have confirmed that computer facial recognition is less accurate at matching African-American faces than Caucasian ones. One reason for the discrepancy is the lack of non-Caucasian faces in datasets from which computer algorithms form a match. The poor representation of people of color from around the world, and their range of facial features and skin shades, creates what researchers have called a “demographic bias” built into the technology. – Nautilus
John Cage, Master Mycologist
Mycologist? That’s mushroom maven to you and me. The late composer was fascinated by the fungi throughout his life, often foraging for them and at one point making money selling his finds to New York restaurants. In 1959, he won the grand prize on an Italian quiz show with his expertise on the subject. He refused, however, to make any connection between mushrooms and music. – The Guardian
That Fine Line Between Collecting And Hoarding
People don’t gather ‘surplus’. Instead, they collect cars, harvest grain or store canned foods. In reality, accumulation is practised and thought about in relation to the specificity of the material world. Only in the abstract models of scholars does ‘surplus’ mean anything without reference to the real world of things. For that reason, the theory that mere ‘surplus’ somehow launched civilisation is wrong. – Aeon
Now This Is Zoom Opera That Works — And It’s For Young Kids
“Admittedly, preschoolers, Zoom and opera don’t immediately sound like the makings of a successful project, but each installment I watched of Opera Starts With Oh! — helmed by director, choreographer and teaching artist Emma Jaster and Opera Lafayette community engagement manager Ersian François — kept its grid of budding opera buffs rapt with an action-packed half-hour of activities, performances and assorted operatic antics.” – The Washington Post
See: Pix Of The Demolition Of LACMA
The $750-million building project is on schedule, with the completion planned for the end of 2023. The new Peter Zumthor-designed building has stirred controversy for its square footage as well as its cost. A symbolic groundbreaking will be set “when possible given the pandemic.” – Los Angeles Times
Male Film Critics Still Get Published Twice As Much As Female Ones: Study
“Female film critics contributed 35% of the film reviews across print, broadcast and online outlets, up 1% from 2019, according to the report, titled Thumbs Down 2020: Film Critics and Gender, and Why It Matters. Though the increase in numbers of female film critics seems marginal, the numbers show a marked improvement from the 73% male to 27% female breakdown in 2016.” – Variety
White Leaders At Some U.S. Theaters Are Ceding Their Jobs To People Of Color
“The theaters are mostly small, and it remains unclear how calls for change in the industry will (or won’t) affect life at larger institutions, many of which have been programmatically and financially hobbled by the coronavirus pandemic.” But this year’s calls for equity are starting to have an effect. Says William Carden, outgoing artistic director of New York’s Ensemble Studio Theater, “The key to antiracism is sharing power. It takes a lot of work and a lot of humility, and it requires that white people step aside.” – The New York Times
14,000-Year-Old Engravings Are Oldest Art Ever Found In British Isles
Well, as long as Jersey, 14 miles off the coast of France but 85 miles from England, counts as the British Isles. “The designs were scratched into small ornamental tablets known as plaquettes … [which] were made by the Magdalenians, a hunter-gatherer culture thought to have expanded out of Iberia (modern Spain and Portugal) and southern France after the peak of the last Ice Age.” – BBC
Italy To Tourists: Please Come Back — Just Don’t Climb All Over The Old Stuff, Okay?
A German couple going swimming in the Grand Canal. An Austrian breaking the toe off a statue when he climbed on it for a selfie. A French woman writing her name in felt-tip pen on the Ponte Vecchio. A woman posing for a selfie on top of 2,000-year-old thermal baths in Pompeii. Italians badly want to revive the all-important tourism industry in the wake of COVID, yes, but not if tourists vandalize. But which will be more effective, education or harsher punishment? – The New York Times
U.S. Court Of Appeals Rules Madrid Museum May Keep Nazi-Looted Pissarro
“The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in California has ruled that the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection Foundation in Madrid is the owner of Camille Pissarro’s 1897 painting Rue Saint-Honoré, Après-midi, Effet de Pluie, which it purchased in 1993 from the collector Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza. In 2005, the heirs to the work’s original owner, Lily Cassirer Neubauer, alleged in a complaint that the foundation knew upon acquiring it that the painting had been stolen by the Nazi regime in 1939.” – ARTnews
What We Learn From Book Manuscripts
The manuscripts of literary works-in-progress fascinate on many levels, from the flush-faced thrill of spying on something intensely private and the visceral delight of knowing that a legendary author’s hand rested on the paper before you, to the light that such early drafts shed on authorial methodology and intent. Sometimes, the very essence of what a writer is trying to express seems to hover tantalisingly in the gap between a word deleted and another added in its place. – BBC
Cameron Mackintosh Companies Eliminate 850 Theatre Jobs
Theatre union: “The entire industry has been shocked by Cameron Mackintosh’s unwillingness to use the coronavirus job retention scheme in full or deploy resources beyond the furlough months to support his backstage and front of house staff. Other West End employers have done their utmost to find creative ways to safeguard the livelihoods of their staff and pursue the bigger mission of saving the world class skills and talents critical to the success of theatres up and down the country.
Why Efficiency Can Be Too Much Of A Good Thing
Some motivation produces excellent performance; too much motivation produces choking. Some group collaboration produces cohesion and enhances productivity; too much of it leads to staleness. Some empathy enables you to understand what another person is going through; too much could prevent you from saying and doing hard things. – Psyche