“A key challenge for selling stereo was consumers’ satisfaction with the mono music systems they already owned. … Something was needed to show people that this new technology was worth the investment. The ‘stereo demonstration’ was born — a mix of videos, print ads and records designed to showcase the new technology and its vibrant sound.” — The Conversation
The Most Difficult Special Effect I Ever Got On Film (Or Didn’t Quite)
“We spoke to 35 filmmakers — directors, cinematographers, effects artists — about the toughest effect they’ve ever pulled off. The resulting stories run the gamut from the computer-generated to the practical, the spectacular to the subtle, and all of them remind us of the sweat that goes into making movie magic.” — Vulture
Scientists Virtually Reconstruct 1,500-Year-Old Bolivian Temple
“Using historical data, 3D-printed pieces, and architectural software, archaeologist Alexei Vranich from UC Berkeley has created a virtual reconstruction of Pumapunku — an ancient Tiwanaku temple now in ruins.” — Gizmodo
Rethinking The Role Of Musicians In Culture
“There is a school of thought in contemporary classical music that music should be above everything else, that it should have a purity about it. To me, that doesn’t make sense. Everything we do in art comes from what’s around us and who we are as humans.” – NewMusicBox
Should AI Learn How To Think More Like Human Brains?
Deep learning is good at learning using many fewer connections between neurons, when it has many episodes or examples to learn from. I think the brain isn’t concerned with squeezing a lot of knowledge into a few connections, it’s concerned with extracting knowledge quickly using lots of connections.” – Wired
Report: UK National Arts Institutions: Income Up, Government Funding Down
The proportion of income generated by the institutions themselves – through fundraising, tickets, commercial activities and other means – rose from 57% to 73%. – ArtsProfessional
The High Museum Asked Rapper Killer Mike To Join Its Board. He Has Some Ideas
While society is constantly redefining what constitutes as fine art, Killer Mike has a plethora of ideas to broaden the High’s scope, including more involvement by members of Atlanta’s infamous hip-hop and R&B community to deeper reflect the city’s culture. – ArtsATL
The One-Man Studio Who Created Some Of The Best Children’s Story Records Ever Made
Jim Copp, an erstwhile jazz performer and L.A. Times society columnist, wrote and narrated the stories, sang the songs, played the instruments, created the sound effects, and layered the tracks (dozens of them) on nine different records between 1958 and 1971. And they still hold up today, even for grown-ups. — The New Yorker
Art Dealers’ Descendant Sues Dutch Government For 144 Old Master Paintings Sold To Nazis
In 1939-40, Dutch dealers Nathan and Benjamin Katz sold almost their entire inventory, at steeply discounted prices, to the Nazis (among them Hermann Goering himself) in exchange for the ability to get their family members safely abroad. Now Benjamin’s grandson is suing the Dutch government, which recovered the works after the war and placed them in museums, to get them back. — The Post and Courier (Charleston)
St. Paul Chamber Orchestra In 2017-18: Small Surplus, Attendance Very Slightly Down, Young Listeners Up
“About 10 percent more young people caught an SPCO concert than the year before, according to a new annual report. Those young concertgoers are a big focus for the nonprofit: Since 2016, the chamber orchestra has lured school and college students with free tickets. The number of unique households attending, too, hit a record high in the fiscal year ending in 2018.” — The Star Tribune (Minneapolis)
Women Are Leading The Arab Gulf’s Surging Art Scene
To the women themselves, gender is almost a non-issue. The Art Newspaper spoke to three female directors who are shaping the future of museums in the Gulf about their efforts to build creative communities, embrace inclusivity in the workplace and reveal the relevance—beyond the beauty—of Islamic art. – The Art Newspaper
Uh Oh: Now We Have To Worry About Provenance Of AI Art?
In the fallout of the Christie’s sale it emerged that the AI was actually the work of another artist, Robbie Barrat. He had programmed it, trained it on works from Wikiart and used it to generate very similar portraits, before he posted the code online with an open-source licence, so others could use it freely. So not only is the Obvious portrait not attributable to the AI – it’s not even really attributable to Obvious. – BBC
Study: How To Build Trust In The Media
It finds that news consumers are more trusting of the media—and more secure about their own ability to discern the truth—when they are exposed to a combination of fact-checking articles and opinion pieces arguing for the importance of journalism. “When one side attacks over and over again, and the other doesn’t respond, at some point people assume that journalists have conceded the point that they’re biased.” – Pacific Standard
Seattle Opera Has A New Home
The 105,000-square-foot building, at Mercer Street and Fourth Avenue North next to McCaw Hall, is designed to allow people to take a peek behind the scenes, with walls of glass allowing the public to see performances and lectures in progress, and a viewing garden where people can watch those at work in the costume shop. – Seattle Times
In Praise Of The Long And Complicated Sentence
“The style guides say: keep your sentences short. … But sometimes a sentence just needs to be long. The world resists our efforts to enclose it between a capital and a full stop. The sentence has to withhold its end because life is like that, refusing to fold itself neatly into subject, verb and object.” — Literary Hub
Meet The Man Who Took Care Of Oakland’s Ghost Ship — And Who’s Awaiting Trial For The Deaths In The Fire There
“Once a week, Max Harris is allowed to leave his 6-by-12-foot cell to go outside. The first thing he does, before the other inmates arrive in the small cement yard in Santa Rita Jail, is run around and pick up all the bugs … He wants to move them out of harm’s way before other men start playing basketball. — The New York Times Magazine
Blockbuster Films With Female Leads Sell Better: Study
“In a report compiled by media research agency Shift7 in collaboration with leading agency CAA, revenue for 350 high-grossing films released between 2014 and 2017 was assessed, and the average results for female-led films did best, at every budget level.” What’s more movies that pass the Bechdel Test do better box office than those that fail it. — The Guardian
Dinner Theater In The 21st Century: Upscale, ‘Immersive’, And Actually Related To The Play
Back in 1973, the Times described the then-popular phenomenon as “restaurants that feature live theater.” Now it’s the other way around, writes Elisabeth Vincentelli: “The productions I caught this fall at least tried to make food an integral part of a show’s aesthetic and thematic universe. In turning New York venues into giant food courts, some even succeeded.” — The New York Times
At Cleveland Orchestra, Deficit Is Down And Audience Is Up
The budget shortfall for fiscal 2018 was $1.3 million, but that’s down from $4.2 million the previous year. At the orchestra’s main venue, Severance Hall, attendance rose by 8%, while audience numbers for summer concerts at Blossom Music Center were up by 28%. — The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)
Ellen DeGeneres Is So Tired Of Being *Nice* That She’s Considering Quitting Her TV Show
“She has to be the only 60-year-old woman in America who is expected to dance with total strangers wherever she goes. … In person, she is more blunt, introspective and interesting than she is on the show, willing to express mild irritation that might seem off-key in front of a national audience. She’s also much more likely to explore dark corners of her psyche, regrets, second thoughts, anxieties that linger.” — The New York Times
Former Director Of New York’s Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet To Head Rambert, Britain’s Oldest Dance Company
Running a contemporary dance institution with such a long history (read: stability) will be quite a change for Benoit Swan Pouffer: Cedar Lake collapsed in 2015 after its sole funder pulled out. — The Guardian