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Reality Has Become A Game Played Online

What we haven’t figured out how to make sense of yet is the fun that many Americans act like they’re having with the national fracture. - The New Atlantis

The Co-opting Of Art In A Changing World

“Our art has become exhaustively political, but it is no longer discernibly subversive,” observed the writer Greg Jackson about the literature of the Trump years, “It is what major cultural institutions, foundations, and media organizations find congenial.” - Liberties Journal

New Canadian Radio Format Focuses On Audience And Wins Listeners

Key to Conversation Radio's success is the higher level of interaction between hosts and the audience. “The hosts skilled in storytelling, the life of a party but not the center of attention – the audience is always the center of attention.” - Inside Radio

Mexican Town Sets Off Debate About Authentic Culture And Branding

The decree has generated conversations in the tourist-heavy, gentrifying borough about history, art, and the effects of globalization: How should a city balance the need for a general sense of cleanliness and order with calls to preserve tradition and culture? - Christian Science Monitor

Minnesota Orchestra Goes Nordic (Again) For Its Next Music Director

"The 52-year-old Danish conductor Thomas Søndergård succeeds — and bears some resemblance to — Osmo Vänskä, a Finnish conductor who, at age 48, arrived in Minnesota by way of Scotland with a history of Sibelius recordings, a lively podium presence and unruly hair." - The Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

The Trap Of Being Over-Informed

The demand to “stay informed” creates and nurtures that feeling of helplessness. By now, it’s common knowledge that social media is exquisitely crafted to make people feel terrible, but it’s also being increasingly recognized that mainstream news media is just as bad. - 3 Quarks Daily

One of the Most Controversial Movies Of The 1970s,”Deliverance”, At 50

"(It's) a powerful exploration of the harshness of the rural landscape, with an ecological message that still resonates. ... In many ways, it defined a particular branch of US cinema – one that became particularly popular in the 1970s, and expressed an abject fear of those who lived outside of cities." - BBC

Gopnik: Remembering Claes Oldenburg

Oldenburg had his avant-garde moment. One of the three saints of the first rise of Popism in the United States, alongside Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, he was, in a way, the odd man out among them. - The New Yorker

The End Of Individual Authorship?

Authorship as we know it — that is, singular, capital-A Authority — will become narratively obsolete. It won’t die, or disappear, but merely get integrated into a massive hive mind, a great narrative-making machine (“The newspaper is the sea; literature flows into it at will”). - LA Review of Books

Conductor Collapses From Podium And Dies In Munich

Stefan Soltesz, an Austrian conductor, was near the end of the first act of Richard Strauss' The Silent Woman at the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich when he fell from the podium. One opera director collaborator said, "In a world of dilettantes, he was the real thing." - The New York Times

The African Artist Collective Turning Colonialism On Its Head

Plantation workers there earn twenty or thirty dollars a month; as artists, they make much more. The collective has brought in more than a hundred thousand dollars since its creation, and it has had shows in cities including Berlin, Warsaw, Amsterdam, Tokyo, New York, Copenhagen, and Jeddah. - The New Yorker

Baltimore Symphony Makes History Again, Appointing Its First Black Music Director

Jonathon Heyward, now 29 and chief conductor of the Northwest German Philharmonic, will be (after the late James DePreist of the Oregon Symphony) the second African-American music director of a major US orchestra in history. He begins his initial five-year term in the fall of 2023. - Yahoo! (The Baltimore Sun)

Consuming The News Depressed Me. So I Quit. But Is There A Way To Fix It?

I went to a therapist. She told me (ready?) to stop consuming the news. That felt wrong. Wasn’t it important to be informed? Quitting the news felt like quitting the world. Then one day a journalist friend confided that she was avoiding the news, too. - Washington Post

How Scientists Are Using AI To Complete Unfinished Symphonies

Mahler and Beethoven left several tantalizing blueprints of their 10th Symphonies behind. Now, computer scientists are developing algorithms for artificial intelligence (AI) to lift the “curse of the ninth” and complete the unfinished works of these classical masters. - Mental Floss

What’s The Most Watched News Publisher On YouTube?  Vox

In number of subscribers, Vox is fourth, behind the BBC, ABC News, and CNN.  But in average number of views per video, Vox racks up more than 2 million, four times the tally of the runner-up, The Economist (and more than 14 times that of Fox News). - Press Gazette (UK)

Forget Genius. Participatory Creativity Is More Powerful

The notion of participatory creativity has major implications for any person or organization concerned with the creation of innovative ideas or artistic expression. It means recognizing and putting in place the means to foster creativity as a collaborative process. - The Conversation

Claes Oldenburg, 93

Mr. Oldenburg entered the New York art scene in earnest in the late 1950s, embracing the audience-participation “Happenings” then in vogue and expanding the boundaries of art with shows that incorporated things like street signs, wire-and-plaster clothing and even pieces of pie. - The New York Times

The Serious Right-Wing Threat To Queer Children’s Literature

"The assumption that 'a gay book' is necessarily a sexualized book, and therefore inappropriate for children, is baked into the language of 'Don’t Say Gay,'" the censorious, proudly homophobic Florida law that Republicans would like to pass and enforce everywhere. - The New Yorker

Winning A Professional Orchestra Audition Is Very Difficult.  Then Comes The Trial Year.

Jeffrey Arlo Brown writes about the tricky, nerve-wracking process that two young trumpeters went through. One passed his trial, the other failed hers — which turned out to be a very lucky thing. - Van

Libraries Are Digitizing And Something’s Being Lost

Many institutions have moved, or are on the verge of moving, significant portions of their collections off-site. Some are embarking on large-scale book de-accessioning projects, a process by which books are removed permanently from a collection. - The Walrus
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