“In 1923 the conductor Sir Thomas Beecham warned that concert halls would soon be left empty ‘if the wireless authorities are allowed to continue their devilish work’. Yet there’s still no sign of that happening. Despite all the recording innovations of the last 100 years, people are still drawn to the actual event: the atmosphere, the sense of occasion, the close proximity of the performers – and the risk of it all going wrong.”
Month: April 2012
Millions Of Books To Be Given Away Monday Night
“Thousands of towns and cities around the country and beyond are participating in the second annual World Book Night, when some 2.5 million free books are expected to be donated, whether at a children’s shelter in Texas or a crisis center in Tampa, Fla.”
How The Arts Evolved (Scientifically)
“If ever there was a reason for bringing the humanities and science closer together, it is the need to understand the true nature of the human sensory world, as contrasted with that seen by the rest of life.”
Warning: Regional Theatres Need To Walk Line Between Relevance, Viability
“There is a conundrum. To remain relevant, the theatre must be more artistically adventurous. But the radical new methods appear less likely to throw up a major commercial hit.”
How The Tonys Change The Business Of Broadway
“The Tony deadline is now the central organizing event that drives Broadway, for better and for worse. A perverse twist on the laws of supply and demand now exists in the theater world because of the Tonys and several other theater awards, all given out in the spring.”
Egyptian Popular Culture Slow To Progress After Mubarak
“When Mubarak fell in February 2011, artists like Salama hoped that stories that had long been kept under wraps could now blossom and a citizenry that had been lapping up fluff might turn to more substantive fare. But as with many of the country’s political changes these shifts have happened unevenly as each entertainment realm has made progress at its own, sometimes turtle-like pace.”
Artists Turn Against Pirate Party
“The Pirate Party has laid claim to another first: It’s the first left-wing party to have a considerable number of intellectuals not for, but against it.”
What Is The New York Times On About With The No One Talks Thing?
“These are the tools, practices, and communities that can make online life not a flight from conversation, but a flight to it. But we will not realize these opportunities as long as we cling to a nostalgia for conversation as we remember it, describe the emergence of digital culture in generational terms, or absolve ourselves of responsibility for creating an online world in which meaningful connection is the norm rather than the exception.”
No One Talks Anymore! (It’s All Technology’s Fault, Too)
“Human relationships are rich; they’re messy and demanding. We have learned the habit of cleaning them up with technology. And the move from conversation to connection is part of this. But it’s a process in which we shortchange ourselves. Worse, it seems that over time we stop caring, we forget that there is a difference.”
Looking Down On London From The Shard
You can’ see, in other words, the whole of London, until now an unencompassable splodge that could last have been captured in a single view perhaps 200 years ago, to its perimeter and beyond. Close to, familiar and not-small objects, such as the Gherkin and HMS Belfast, look like large toys. It is both implausible and real, something well-known seen from an unprecedented place. It’s hard to know what to do except gawp.” (And then there’s the building itself.)