Plenty of artists were furious when Kapoor negotiated exclusive rights to the new pigment Vantablack. Artist Stuart Semple did more than just complain: he’s created a super-fluorescent pink, and he’ll sell it to any and every artist but one.
Hey Bay-Bay, What’s With The Cray-Zay Way So Many Pop Singers Sing The ‘Ee’ Sound?
Dan Nosowitz talked to linguists and voices coaches and eventually found a likely theory: It started out as a particular little trick of pop vocal technique and morphed into a way “to co-opt the signifiers of intensity.” (That’s not academic gobbledygook: when you get to that point in the article, it will make sense.)
Is Mel Gibson Redeeming Himself In Hollywood?
“It may be hard to believe at the moment, but there was a time in the US when spouting racist and misogynistic hate speech would damage your career, rather than propelling you to its highest office. Just ask Mel Gibson.”
Boston’s Museum Of Fine Arts Is Building A New $24M Conservation Center
There will be six labs on two floors, and the facility is expected to place the MFA among the top institutions for art conservation in the world.
Another Dopey Tourist Taking A Selfie Wrecks An Antique Statue
Poor Lisbon – this is the second time this year it’s happened there.
Poland’s World War II Museum Hasn’t Even Opened Yet, And It’s Already Become A Political Battleground
The museum, which has been under construction in Gdansk for five years and is supposed to open in January, was a project of the previous government, unseated last year by the right-wing Law and Justice Party. The new government, which controls funding, isn’t happy with the museum’s content.
Librarians In Philadelphia To Get Training As ‘Community Health Specialists’ – Because They’re Already Doing That Kind Of Work
Philly is the poorest of the country’s ten largest cities, and since the Free Library of Philadelphia is just that (free), it’s become a major resource for people who have almost none. Staffers have been helping residence connect with health-related services for some time – so now UPenn is starting a program to give those staffers training that will help.
Research Literature Is Growing Exponentially. Researchers Need Help. This New Search Engine Promises It
“Judging from the research papers already indexed by the new search engine, the volume of academic research is increasing at an exponential rate, and one independent study says that the number of papers is increasing about 4 or 5 percent a year, with 2.5 million published in 2014. That means researchers just don’t have the time to look through everything. They need some help.”
How Our Brains Fill In The Blanks Of Ambiguity To Create Beliefs
Neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett: The structure of the brain is such that there are many more intrinsic connections between neurons than there are connections that bring sensory information from the world. From that incomplete picture, she says, the brain is “filling in the details, making sense out of ambiguous sensory input.” The brain, she says, is an “inference generating organ.” She describes an increasingly well-supported working hypothesis called predictive coding, according to which perceptions are driven by your own brain and corrected by input from the world. There would otherwise simple be too much sensory input to take in.
Poetry Isn’t Dying. Poets, On The Other Hand…
“Not only is it not endangered, it will outlast any number of species of living things on the face of the earth. It will only perish with our own. I worry about journalism. I don’t worry about Poetry. Being a poet is a more complicated matter.”
The Illusion Of Choice On Netflix (And Why It’s Bad For Movie-Lovers)
“The service has 47 million subscribers in the United States, and its movie library is affected not only by the limitations of particular licensing deals, which means that the number of titles is constantly contracting and expanding, but also by what subscribers actually watch. To use the contemporary buzzword “curated,” Netflix would argue that it does indeed take a curatorial approach to movies, but one that’s appropriate to a consumer product rather than a museum. It does not see its mission as a conservational one. And the hard truth about the future of streaming services is that even those with the loftiest stated ambitions will be obliged to balance those ambitions against market demand.”
After A 60-Year Career, Ennio Morricone Has More To Say, And Conduct
Ignore his 2015 Oscar: “Morricone is not a man to rest upon on his laurels with successful mainstream sound tracks. ‘I like to experiment still,’ says the longtime member of Italian avant garde-ist Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza.”
How Are We Supposed To Behave At Concerts?
Basically: Do we stand? Sit? Talk? Sing along? Cheer? Shout out song titles? Dance? And if we do any of that, who decides when and why?
From Internment Camps To Star Trek To Marriage Equality: George Takei’s Museum
The Japanese American National Museum isn’t really Takei’s museum, but he’s donated “300 linear feet of banker’s boxes” worth of relics from his eight decades of life as an actor and activist.
Leonard Cohen’s Last Interview (With David Remnick): “I’m Ready To Die”
“He was already suffering from a number of health problems. “At a certain point, if you still have your marbles and are not faced with serious financial challenges, you have a chance to put your house in order. It’s a cliché, but it’s underestimated as an analgesic on all levels. Putting your house in order, if you can do it, is one of the most comforting activities, and the benefits of it are incalculable.”
Internet Movie Database (IMDb) Sues State Of California Over Law Preventing It From Listing Actors Ages
The suit says: “This law unfairly targets IMDb.com (which appears to be the only public site impacted by the law) and forces IMDb to suppress factual information from public view,” said the 15-page complaint (read it here) filed in U.S. District Court. “Moreover, the factual information being suppressed from IMDb is available from many other sources, not least including Wikipedia, Google, Microsoft (Bing), and Apple (Siri).”
The One TV Show That Really Gets The Aftereffects Of Sexual Assault Right
The ‘shock-and-arouse’ approach of Game of Thrones, the ripped-from-the-headlines feel and consciousness-raising of Law & Order: SVU, the superhero wish-fulfillment of Jessica Jones – “real-life survivors might struggle to find their experiences reflected accurately [in those series] … So it’s ironic that perhaps the best drama to explore the trauma of sexual assault is a show that, unlike SVU or Game of Thrones, very few people watch: SundanceTV’s Rectify.”
Literary Analysis Teaches Us To Take The Feelings Out In Favor Of The Brain. That’s A Mistake
“One of the terrible secrets about attending graduate school in literature is that it can ruin your ability to read for pleasure; pick up a book, and a nasty voice whispers that you should be reading something serious – or reading something seriously. So in the classroom, I learned to put away my body. Outside of the academy, however, specifically through fanfiction, I was learning to read with it.”
The ‘Greatest Literary Prize You’ve Never Heard Of’? The ‘American Nobel’? Possibly
“Over its 45 year history, 32 of the winners, jurors, and finalists have gone on to win the Nobel Prize” – among them Gabriel García Marquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Tomas Tranströmer, Czesław Miłosz, Doris Lessing, and Svetlana Alexievich. Editor and literary publisher Chad Post pays a visit to Norman, Oklahoma to check out the Neustadt Prize and this year’s winner, Dubravka Ugrešić.
Ballet’s New Reigning Power Couple Get A Rare Chance To Perform Together – In Contemporary Dance, No Less
Roslyn Sulcas talks to Natalia Osipova and Sergei Polunin about the program of new and recent work Osipova put together this summer and is bringing to the States.
Historic Chinese Town Uses The Arts To Juice Up The Tourism It Lives And Dies By
Wuzhen, a picturesque canal town near China’s east coast, has developed a well-regarded theater festival and several visual art events to turn day-trippers into multi-day visitors. “‘Wuzhen has a kind of nourishing energy,’ said Meng Jinghui, the artistic director of this year’s theater festival. ‘In terms of content and budget, they have given us complete freedom. That’s very rare in China.'”
Can You Teach Astrophysics Through Dance? Professors And Performers In Manchester Are Giving It A Try
In an article headlined “Dancing with the stars” (ahem), Dance Manchester director Deb Ashby writes about Stellarium, a project led by three female astrophysicists and a female choreographer that actually is communicating concepts of basic astrophysics to primary school students via dance performance.
The Tech School That’s Had A Theatre For Fifty Years
“As a technology university that has never had a drama or dance department, the University of Bradford seems like a weird old place to host one of the country’s first professional practice venues. But when the university was formed, the incoming senior management appointed fellowships in theatre and music, believing that engaging with art and culture was an intrinsic part of any education, technical or otherwise.” (Those were the days, eh?)
Top Posts From AJBlogs 11.10.16
Racism and the ‘Bigger Force’
When I asked South African playwright Athol Fugard his opinion of race relations in the United States, he replied: Man! It’s not as easy to identify the enemy here, as it is back home, … read more
JBlog: Straight|Up Published 2016-11-10
Happy Birthday, USMC
Today is the 241st birthday of the United States Marine Corps. Hard-core Marines (is there another kind?) might consider it heresy to create a jazz version of the Marine Corps Hymn. They would be wrong. … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2016-11-10
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Leonard Cohen, Singer/Songwriter And Poet, Dead At 82
Though he never had a song in the Top 40, “[his] intensely personal lyrics exploring themes of love, faith, death and philosophical longing made him the ultimate cult artist, and [his] enigmatic song ‘Hallelujah’ became a celebratory anthem recorded by hundreds of artists.”