“The people who were there, and there were quite a lot of them, screamed and yelled with whole-hearted appreciation. And there were plenty of younger faces among the picnickers on the lawn. But it was far from a capacity crowd. Fewer people than in the past view the chance to hear a star soloist, rising conductor and orchestra in popular repertoire on a warm summer night as a can’t-miss event.”
Author: Douglas McLennan
Scientists Fed 1,700 Novels Into Their Computers And Boiled Down Our Literature Into Six Basic Story Arcs
“Their method is straightforward. The idea behind sentiment analysis is that words have a positive or negative emotional impact. So words can be a measure of the emotional valence of the text and how it changes from moment to moment. So measuring the shape of the story arc is simply a question of assessing the emotional polarity of a story at each instant and how it changes.”
This Week In Audience: What Audiences Want (And How They Want It) Edition
This week: How do you keep the immersive experience “art”?… Screens are killing dance (unless they’re not)… A Music store that’s figured out community… The Louisville Symphony tries a new community model… Now audio is beating video – who knew?
Five Highlights From Last Week’s AJ: Ethics, Success, And Documentation Edition
This week: What ethical responsibilities do funders and funded have to one another?… The gatekeeper problem is still a thing in the internet age… What should the measure of success be in opera?… Historians are going to have a real problem documenting today’s artists… Our all-image culture suggests the place of images in art may be changing.
Scientists Store Music, Books On DNA
In a University of Washington lab test tube, researchers stored an HD video of the song “This Too Shall Pass” by OK Go. They also stored the text of 100 books, and the Declaration of Human Rights in multiple languages.
Want To Better Understand How Cities work? Here’s 6000 Years Of Data That Just Came Online
Their data lists not only the size of past cities, but how, when, and where they emerged. That’s a big deal—and not just for historians.
A-List Art And The Value Of Architecture
While developers do not feel an absolute competitive imperative to have A-list art, many believe that great art can help make an already distinctive building an enduring one (and, one assumes, a profitable one).
How A Young Entrepreneur Uses Dance To Make Videos Go Viral
“DanceOn tapped 50 influencers in its network to create dance-based music videos for Silentó’s song, “Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae).” In just three months, those videos gained 250 million views. It eventually propelled the official music video, which was also created with the help of DanceOn, to become the most viewed YouTube video of 2015.”
Is Push To Change Musical Theatre Form Hurting Creativity?
“Personally, I wouldn’t want to write something thinking about form, it would scare me. I want to tell something in the best way I possibly can. I would feel hamstrung if I was sat there thinking I have got to completely reinvent the form. The best things work because sometimes you do exactly what the audience wants.”
Alignment Of Values – What Does Your Funder Believe In?
“Increasingly, artists and arts organisations are being asked to reflect upon who funds their work and examine whether that funder shares their values. The motivations of a corporate sponsor are not something that should be taken for granted. But in order to do that, we first need to understand our own ethical values.”