And, by the way, is it an opera or isn’t it?
Month: July 2016
The Murder Of An Internet Star In Turkey Raises Many Questions
“Baloch, who was 26 years old, first rose to prominence after appearing in a Pakistani singing-competition show. Using Twitter and Facebook to post racy videos where she opined on controversial topics, she rapidly became one of the country’s most widely known social-media figures.”
The Metropolitan Museum Could Cut Well More Than 100 Jobs
“Curatorial and conservation jobs are likely to be cut by an additional 5 percent, and administrative staff — including marketing, human resources, and digital personnel — may see staff cuts of 15 to 20 percent.”
Destination Indies Try To Combat The Pervasive Amazon
“You can’t just exist as a bookshop nowadays; you have to make it a place where people want to hang out.”
Our Pop Culture Is Filled With Anger
Visceral and at times frightening narratives are running through our popular culture. We get Batman and Superman — once the extensions of our better selves — battling each other in a grim rain; the take-no-prisoners TV commentaries of Samantha Bee and John Oliver; abrasive, if clever, comics like Amy Schumer; rage and betrayal in Beyonce’s “Lemonade”; meth and degradation in “Breaking Bad”; beheadings, dragons, torture and wars for supremacy in “Game of Thrones.”
How Playwrights Do Anger
“The better playwrights are inevitably drawn more to questions than answers, but in turbulent times a God-like neutrality can seem like an abdication of responsibility. To put the matter in Yeatsian terms: Why should the best among us, our writers, lack conviction, while the worst, a tough call but let’s go with our representatives in Congress, be full of passionate intensity?”
Shadow Dancing: A Sidewalk That Responds To Your Movement
“A project called Mesa Musical Shadows, by Montréal’s Daily Tous Les Jours studio, is doing just that. It’s a public installation that turns a chunk of pavement in Arizona’s Mesa Arts Center into a giant game of Dance Dance Revolution that you play by moving your shadow.”
Neuroscientists Are Still Struggling With Why Some Music Sounds Better To Us Than Other Music
“Some chords sound good—they’re consonant—and other notes grate when they’re played at the same time. Unraveling why that is could explain something basic about how humans perceive the world. Maybe people are just wired that way. Or maybe, as a paper argues today in Nature, it’s a product of human culture.”
How Rembrandt Got His Paintings So Perfect (Optics?)
“In a paper published Wednesday in the Journal of Optics, Francis O’Neill lays out a theory that Rembrandt set up flat and concave mirrors to project his subjects — including himself — onto surfaces before painting or etching them.”
How To Build A Theatre And Make It Successful
“Until last August, when they engaged a general management company, Ms. Nichols (who makes a part-time salary with the troupe) and Mr. Tucker (who makes a full-time salary) had been shepherding Bedlam’s rise themselves, building a board of directors and gradually hiring people to take on some of their too many tasks. Still on their wish list, among other things: a managing director.”