Stuart Isacoff: “A performance should be unpredictable – an adventure. Today we often demand instead that an interpretation be unblemished, ‘correct’ – something to be memorialized and imitated. (Those of us who teach can attest to the number of students who see their job as learning to duplicate exactly a particular recording of a work by a recognized artist.)”
Month: November 2014
Net Neutrality For Dummies
Matthew Inman explains it all simply and clearly for those who don’t yet get it. (includes gratuitous references to crab tacos)
Some People Are Biologically Incapable of Dancing
“Most bad dancers have nothing but their own awkwardness and self-consciousness to blame, but for a few, a complete lack of rhythm could have a biological explanation, suggests some new research published this week … It’s called beat-deafness, and it’s a sensory deficit analogous to being tone-deaf, or color-blind.”
A Typeface Designed To Help Dyslexics Read
Designer Christian Boer (who is himself dyslexic): “When they’re reading, people with dyslexia often unconsciously switch, rotate and mirror letters in their minds. Traditional typefaces make this worse, because they base some letter designs on others, inadvertently creating ‘twin letters’ for people with dyslexia.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 11.10.14
Opening Soon In Tacoma: New Wing, New Collection
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts Published 2014-11-10
Is Opera Really “Dead”?
AJBlog: CultureCrash Published 2014-11-10
“Meaningfully Profitable”: Sotheby’s Bill Ruprecht on the Performance of Auction Guarantees
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2014-11-10
Zurbarán In The News!
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts Published 2014-11-09
Laugh, and you laugh alone
(Terry Teachout on pianist Harriet Cohen)
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2014-11-10
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Tuning Prisoners Into A Human Piano
“In music class, these men were able to temporarily change their identity from prisoner to student, from being numbered to being human. Music became a life force, providing vital human connection in an environment where social interaction is suppressed.”
London’s Opera Dancers Would Like To Be Paid More Than The Box-Office Attendants, Please
“The dancers you employ will be highly skilled, qualified, experienced professionals who will have gone through a rigorous audition process to achieve their position. I’m sure you can understand how disheartening it is to then be valued so poorly.”
Universities Have To Respond To ‘Fake Science’ – But How?
“Giving cover to pseudoscience movements violates standards of good scholarship and can damage the institution’s reputation in the eyes of prospective students and faculty. Yet universities are also supposed to be committed to free inquiry.”
President Obama Weighs In On Net Neutrality, Calling The Internet ‘A Utility’
“The White House proposal calls for no paid prioritization, no blocking of any content that is not illegal, and no throttling of Internet services, where some customers have their Internet speeds artificially slowed down.”
The Woman Who Matches $10 Million Masterpieces To The People Who Can Pay For Them
“Her profile rocketed after she helped her contemporary-art clients place bids or win half of Christie’s top 10 priciest works in May. Nearly 6 feet tall, she was easy to spot standing between colleagues in the saleroom’s phone banks, wielding three cellphones at a time and lobbing bids at a regular clip. By sale’s end, she helped her Chinese clients win as much as $236 million of art.”