One influence will certainly be our language’s centuries-old habit of shifting vowel sounds over time. The other will be the huge number of people – well over a quarter of the world’s population – that speaks English as a second language. Here are some educated guesses as to how those influences will take shape. (includes sound clips)
Bhangra On The Beach – Livening Up The Gray North Atlantic And Lighting Up The Web
Hasmeet Singh of the Halifax-based group Maritime Bhangra: “It was one of those things we usually do, right? We just go anywhere and start dancing and make a small clip out of it and just post it. … We were like, ‘Okay, this will get like 1,000 or 1,500 views.’ And it looks like it’s going to go 300,000 in a few moments.”
Canadians Working On An Olympic Games For The Arts
“Olympic medals for the world’s best art seems an odd thing to revive, but a brave and no doubt well-intentioned Canadian organization is bringing back the idea of an international art competition nominally tied to or modelled on the Olympics. They hope to hold the International ArtsGames in Montreal in 2018.”
Are We Close To Understanding The Science Of How The Brain Makes Thoughts?
“If consciousness is, as it should be, an organized state of matter, we seem to be lacking an essential component to describe it. For comparison, a building has bricks and pumps and electrical currents controlled by on-off switches flowing through countless wires. It is a mechanical contraption, working firmly within a set of physical laws. We understand buildings, and can build and fix them because we know the underlying physical principles under which they operate. Likewise, it is plausible that we can build brain-like systems having different kinds of experiential awareness like seeing or hearing, and that respond to such stimuli with certain actions. Many robots already do this.”
Seeing Cultural Appropriation And Clueless Privilege In Action, And Calling It Out
African-American artist Damon Davis on the work of Kelley Walker: “I sat in the audience listening to this man meander on and on to the crowd, interjecting the occasional art term like ‘form’ or ‘color,’ but never once giving the slightest explanation for why he used over-sexualized images of Black women and traumatic images of Black men being brutalized by police and dogs. … Now, what if I took pictures from the Holocaust and smeared cream cheese on them and threw them in a frame, and then told you it was a critique of capitalism and an exercise in color and the form of the contemporary modernist landscape?”
Portugal Will Keep, Not Sell, 85 Mirós Repossessed From Failed Bank
“The paintings, estimated to be worth around 35 million euros ($39 million), came under state ownership in 2008 when the government nationalised the failed bank BNP … They were originally set for the auction block at Christie’s but withdrawn after public protest.”
David Shrigley’s Gloriously Monstrous Thumb Unveiled On Trafalgar’s Fourth Plinth
“Huh. As I suspected. The vaunted optimism of Shrigley’s thumbs-up to Britain’s glorious future is undermined by the deathly black hue of his appendage. Then there is the surreal monstrosity of the hugely deformed thumb. At seven metres high this is the tallest sculpture ever put on the plinth and, while that may seem the kind of statistic tour guides reel off, it has genuine relevance to how it works on a square that is also home to Nelson’s Column.”
Where The Big Bucks Are? Actors Go To The Fan Conventions
“Fan conventions, where stars can take home hundreds of thousands of dollars in exchange for a few hours of time, once were the domain of has-beens and sci-fi novelties. But the business has become so lucrative — think $500,000 for Captain America’s Chris Evans or The Walking Dead favorite Norman Reedus to appear — that current TV and film stars are popping up at events like Salt Lake City Comic-Con and Heroes and Villains Fan Fest.”
How Do You Measure Audience Value? Hang Out
“As an audience researcher, I am constantly disappointed about the ways in which core audiences are treated by arts organisations. They are often aggressively marketed, cynically courted and increasingly propositioned for money. But rarely are they treated as equal partners in the processes of meaning-making and engaged with in any authentic or meaningful way.”
The Digital World Has Transformed The Idea Of How You “Own” Culture
“If you are like most consumers you are probably unaware of the more subtle ways that your digital books — and movies, games, and other media purchases — are different from physical copies. That’s because your rights to those digital things are filtered through a maze of intellectual property law and limited by the fine print that you agree to when you buy them.”
How Julie Kent Plans To Reshape Washington Ballet
Her predecessor, Septime Webre, “stamped the Washington Ballet as a showcase of youthful punch and audience-friendly showmanship. … [Kent] She aims to groom the Washington Ballet in the more refined, elegant language of the classics and first-rate contemporary works.”
Terrific Action Films On $200 Budgets: Uganda’s One-Man Hollywood
“It starts out like any other training montage. Alan is a white doctor in Uganda, and the children of the slum resolve to teach him the ways of the commando. A child soldier, armed with a makeshift assault rifle strung together by yam sticks and slung over his shoulder, chases the hapless doctor into a small stream. Alan falls face first. ‘That, my friend, was poo poo, for real,’ the film’s omniscient narrator exclaims through giggles. ‘This is Uganda. Poo poo everywhere.’ Madcap moments like this are emblematic of Wakaliwood-style films. And Wakaliwood is one Ugandan man in a slum.”
Donald Trump Stiffed Me On $100,000 Worth Of Pianos, Says New Jersey Music Store Owner
J. Michael Diehl: “My relationship with Trump began in 1989, when he asked me to supply several grand and upright pianos to his then-new Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City. I’d been running a music store for more than 30 years at that point, selling instruments to local schools and residents. My business was very much a family affair (my grandsons still run the store). And I had a great relationship with my customers – no one had ever failed to pay.”
$300K Gish Prize Goes To Wooster Group’s Elizabeth LeCompte
“LeCompte takes the award for 40 years of Wooster Group work encompassing a string of experimental, boundary-pushing, multimedia shows that include Route 1 & 9, L.S.D. (Just The High Points), Brace Up! and The Emperor Jones. She co-founded the troupe with Spaulding Gray, with Willem Dafoe among its original members; Frances McDormand has performed with the company in recent years.”
The Matthew Bourne Dancer Killed In A Collision Last Year? The Driver Was Talking On His Cell Phone
“Dancer Jonathan Ollivier was killed when his motorbike was hit by a minicab while the driver was making a hands-free call on his mobile, a court has heard. Ollivier died last August after his motorbike collided with a car as he was making his way to the final performance of Matthew Bourne’s The Car Man.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 09.28.16
What should Congress do about the arts?
I am going to urge caution on the vision thing. Because aside from “art is good”, reasonable people can differ on what that vision ought to be. … read more
AJBlog: For What It’s Worth Published 2016-09-28
Miles Davis: Long Time Gone
This is how co-host Renee Montaigne of National Public Radio’s Morning Edition opened one of the program’s hours this morning. “We’re kind of blue. Miles Davis died 25 years ago today.” … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2016-09-28
Snapshot: The Kinks sing “Sunny Afternoon”
The Kinks perform Ray Davies’ “Sunny Afternoon” in a 1966 promotional video. … read more
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2016-09-28
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Bots Are Figuring Out How To Make Art (And Starting To Get Good At It)
“We’re always writing from our experiences of things that we’ve read and what we’ve heard and things that we’ve absorbed verbally. So to what extent can anyone author anything? And to what extent does this machine augment this capacity?”
An Evolving Landscape Of Creative Re-Use Rights
So, what do you do if you want to use someone else’s work as a creative jumping off point? “Appropriation art” is in the news these days; just ask artist Richard Prince, who’s been sued multiple times for copyright infringement and won, based on the “fair use” principle.
Continuing Woes: Metropolitan Museum Lays Off 34 Employees
As AJBlogger Judith Dobrzynski reported yesterday, the Met is cutting staff. “The Met has been contending with a ballooning deficit even as it aims to raise money for a $600 million new wing dedicated to Modern and contemporary art and to sustain its eight-year lease at the Met Breuer at a cost of $17 million a year.”
Why Balanchine’s ‘Jewels’ Makes The Perfect Introduction To Ballet
Alastair Macaulay: “Nobody can miss how vividly different its stage worlds are: the green romantic medieval French forest of ‘Emeralds’ (music by Fauré); the red Modernist high-energy American urban world of ‘Rubies’ (Stravinsky); the wintry white (both snowscape and palace) grand imperial Russian classicism of ‘Diamonds’ (Tchaikovsky). What other artist could conjure these three dissimilar realms with such easy mastery?”
Gamers Get Re-energized By The Possibilities Of Virtual Reality
“What makes virtual reality so potent is not only how it envelops players in a 360-degree visual experience, but also how it uses 3-D lenses, immersive audio and head-tracking technology to create a profound sense of physical presence that developers are just beginning to explore.”
What To Do With A Former Saddam Palace? A Museum Of Course
“The Basrah Museum has been planned for eight years and will join the National Museum in Baghdad as one of the most important institutions in Iraq. For the first time in a generation, the people of southern Iraq will have their own museum—a great achievement under extremely difficult circumstances.”
San Francisco Museums’ Controversial Board Chair Keeps Position, Gives Up President’s Title
“Embattled philanthropist Dede Wilsey, who waged an all-out campaign to stay on as head of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco amid probes into whether she improperly spent the institutions’ money, won approval Tuesday to extend her reign as the city’s queen of culture – although with a new title and possibly less power.”
‘You Could Souse Herrings In Chords Like These’: London Critic Smacks Gergiev And The Mariinsky – Hard – For Underrehearsal
Anna Picard: “Precision has never been part of the Gergiev-Mariinsky rough magic package. While not exactly sight-reading, the orchestra played as though rehearsing for the first time, without stopping to correct infelicities of articulation, intonation, blend, balance and ensemble. If authenticity is sounding like a mutinous scratch band in Cherepovets, this performance had plenty of it. You could argue that Prokofiev’s Classical Symphony benefits from a casual approach. But oh, the vinegar! You could souse herrings in chords like these.”
He Left The Directorship Of The Rijksmuseum To Open This New Institution – And Two Months Later, He’s Quitting
“[Wim] Pijbes left the position of general director of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam over the summer to lead the Voorlinden, a private contemporary art museum in Wassenaar that was founded by the Dutch art collector and businessman Joop van Caldenborgh. ‘We both had the feeling that it was better for both of us and for the museum to stop and to quit,’ Mr. Pijbes said in a telephone interview.”