“In hindsight, we can see how rarely one technology supersedes another: the rise of the podcast makes clear that video didn’t doom audio any more than radio ended reading. Yet in 1913, a journalist interviewing Thomas Edison on the future of motion pictures recounted the inventor declaring confidently that “books … will soon be obsolete in the public schools.” – The Paris Review
Month: September 2019
The Exhibition That Made, And Almost Wrecked, Francis Bacon’s Career
His 1970 solo show at the Grand Palais in Paris meant to establish Bacon in the very highest echelons of living painters — even, he hoped, as a peer to Picasso. Then his erstwhile lover, the subject of many of the works on display, killed himself in their hotel room just before the show’s opening. – The Guardian
The Simple Structure That All Human Languages Share
Sentences and phrases of human languages, all human languages, have an inaudible and invisible hierarchical structure. When we are children, we impose this structure on the sequences of sounds that we hear. Our minds can’t understand continuous streams of sound directly as meaningful language. Instead, we subconsciously chop them up into discrete bits—sounds and words—and organize these into larger units. This means that sentences have a hierarchical structure. – Nautilus
The Best Dance Of The 21st Century (So Far)
Be wary of lists such as these. The Guardian attempts to select the best dance this century. But with dance spread out all over the world, can a critic (or group of them) choose (let alone judge) best performances? Doubtful. And yet, there are some great candidates for a best-of list here. – The Guardian
How Walt Whitman Hid A Dozen Same-Sex Love Poems In Plain Sight, And How A Researcher Found Them
Whitman wrote a sequence of poems title “Live Oak, With Moss” — inspired, scholars believe, by his romance with one Fred Vaughan — but scattered them throughout his 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass so that they wouldn’t be conspicuous. (Two of them were removed from subsequent editions for the next century.) Here’s how a scholar, back in 1959, discovered the series and reassembled it in sequence. – Virginia Magazine (UVA)
A New Library In Queens Is Terrific. So Why Can’t New York Build More Like This?
“Compact, at 22,000 square feet and 82 feet high, the library is among the finest and most uplifting public buildings New York has produced so far this century. It also cost something north of $40 million and took forever to complete. So it raises the question: Why can’t New York build more things like this, faster and cheaper?” – The New York Times
Betty Corwin, Who Saved Broadway Performances For Posterity, Dead At 98
The Theater on Film and Tape Archive at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts “was the charismatic Ms. Corwin’s baby. She proposed it to the library in 1969 and, told that she could pursue it as a volunteer, coaxed it into being through a feat of extraordinary diplomacy, persuading each theatrical union that recordings would neither lead to piracy nor harm the box office.” – The New York Times
Russia’s Culture Minister Called Comic Books Stupid. Sales Soared
Dmitry Yakovlev, head of one of Russia’s leading indie comic producers, the St Petersburg-based Bumkniga, was unfazed by the minister’s dig. “Medinsky’s comment was pure stupidity, therefore supporting the comic industry,” he told the Guardian. “Sales increased.” – The Guardian
New York City To Build Performing Arts Center Dedicated To Immigrants
“Last week, the city announced that it has committed $15 million to fund the design and construction of the Immigrant Research and Performing Arts Center in Inwood, the northernmost neighborhood in Manhattan. [Two municipal agencies] released an initial call for interest in the project, beginning the search for a non-profit to step in and manage the development and operation of the facility.” – artnet
The Man Who Would Be Beckett
Bill Irwin finds Beckett’s remarkable use of language something of a balm at a time when the use of words has grown so imprecise. “Our culture runs away from words,” he bemoaned. “It seems to me one of the things this language can do is help us reconnect with human intelligence, as distinct from artificial intelligence. A lot of Beckett’s language is a portrait of consciousness — of how the mind works.” – Los Angeles Times