Evidence suggests that synchronising movement with others leads to feelings of togetherness or ‘oneness’ – perhaps because the intentional act of coordinating with another person necessitates sharing mental states. To row a boat down the river, the individual ‘I’ must become the collective ‘we’.
Month: July 2016
Why Come Back To Broadway To Direct A Show You Did There Decades Ago? Trevor Nunn, James Lapine, And Scott Ellis Explain
“Theater rewards the fresh take – a new work, or a new set of eyes on a familiar story. But Broadway this year is home to three shows that are being directed by men who oversaw the same shows, also on Broadway, decades ago. Why are they back? Here are edited excerpts from conversations with the directors about their experiences and expectations the second time around.”
Is Art Made By Computers Even Art?
“Art requires emotional and phrenic investments, with the promised return of a shared slice of the human experience. When we view computer art, the pestering, creepy worry is: who’s on the other end of the line? Is it human? We might, then, worry that it’s not art at all.”
Spencer Tunick Brought 100 Nude Women To Republican Convention HQ
“At dawn on Sunday, … Tunick posed the group in a photographic art installation where they held circular Mylar mirrors over their heads and reflected light at the city [of Cleveland] to expose what they view as the naked truth about Republicans.” (By now, of course, this is one of the less weird things to have happened there.)
Why Would 100 Women Go To Cleveland And Get Naked For The Republican Convention? Let Some Of Them Tell You
“I very much appreciate and identify with the mission of this piece. On a political level, my participation will be in contrast to many Republican ideals regarding the use of women’s bodies. My body. My body is mine and I choose how it is used, from abortion to posing nude publicly.”
The Politics Of The New ‘Ghostbusters’ (A Critics’ Roundtable)
“Even before any tickets had been sold, Ghostbusters was already surely the most argued-about movie of the year, attacked by angry male fans on the internet and hailed as a new milestone in Hollywood diversity. Wesley Morris, critic at large for The New York Times, joins its chief film critics Manohla Dargis and A. O. Scott to survey the state of the debate now that people have actually seen the movie.”
Trolls Drive One Of The New ‘Ghostbusters’ Stars Off Twitter Altogether
“Leslie Jones, one of the most visible and accessible stars in the all-female remake of the Ghostbusters movie, said that she would leave Twitter after becoming the target of online trolls who sent her a stream of pornography, racist speech and hateful memes. … ‘Ok I have been called Apes,’ she wrote on Twitter, ‘even got a pic with semen on my face. I’m tryin to figure out what human means. I’m out.'”
Why Big Publishing’s Blockbuster Mentality Is Good For Indie Presses And Good For American Literature
“When editors and publishers feel they need to fight for every moment of planned reading, and readers are experiencing a shrinking cultural attention span, it’s surprising that large books inherently make the most market sense. With this pattern of investment behavior, major presses are inadvertently helping foster an environment where American indie presses can thrive by doing the very thing they’re best at: being small and, by extension, focusing on creativity and originality over sales.”
‘Reparations’: Opera Can – No, It Must – Become A Tool Of Cultural Change, Says New York Times Classical Music Editor
“For centuries, opera has been a tool of power, a spectacle developed and organized by influential Western nations and the elites within them. It is long past time for the art form to be more open about this heritage, and to make reparations for it. Using opera to understand the connections between cultures and to experiment with what can bridge them is no longer merely an aesthetic possibility; it’s a moral necessity.”
Stewart Pearce, 65, Former Met Opera Director Of Planning And Budgets And Chief Of Metropolitan Opera Guild
“Pearce devoted virtually his entire career to two arts organizations that were intimately connected – the Metropolitan Opera and the Metropolitan Opera Guild – and over a period of almost forty years his service to both institutions was distinguished, marked by intelligence, acumen and a rare degree of discretion.”