“Nowadays, it seems, anything and everything can qualify as a masterpiece: a hit single, a theme park, even a video game. And while the artistic merits of some of these objets d’art can be defended, it is tempting to suggest that the word itself has become, like “fascist” and “racist,” devalued by indiscriminate usage to the point of vacuity.”
Author: Douglas McLennan
That Time That Theatre Saved A City
Today, the idea that a work written for the theater could “save” a nation—for this was what Aristophanes’ word polis, “city,” really meant; Athens, for the Athenians, was their country—seems odd, even as a joke. For us, popular theater and politics are two distinct realms. In the contemporary theatrical landscape, overtly political dramas that seize the public’s imagination (Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, say, with its thinly veiled parable about McCarthyism, or Tony Kushner’s AIDS epic Angels in America) tend to be the exception rather than the rule.
Did Academia Take New Music Down The Wrong Path?
“At present, contemporary music in U.S. academia has primarily become the space where young U.S. citizens can explore sound creatively without ever needing to consider that music may perhaps be more than a commodity. Without having a desire to be polemical, I am afraid that this music has merely become the elitist entertainment of a shrinking upper-middle class that still can afford to go to college. Perhaps from the very beginning, the project of New Music had already been defeated, but that does not mean it is dead.”
Scientists Have Built An Artificial Intelligence That Can Read News Stories And Answer Questions
“Soon you could be chatting with your computer about the morning news. An AI has learned to read and answer questions about a news article with unprecedented accuracy.”
Fight Over Building A George Lucas Museum Goes Bare-Knuckles Chicago-Style
The Chicago Park District on Sunday accused Friends of the Parks of issuing an “outrageous” list of demands that is “nothing short of extortion” and will likely be the “final nail in the coffin” of efforts to keep movie mogul George Lucas’ museum in Chicago.
This Week In Audience: Is Text Slipping Away As We Go More Video?
Looking for diverse audiences? Here’s where they are… But orchestras are still struggling to be relevant… Turns out attention might be a muscle we have to use or we lose it… FaceBook wonders if it will be all-video in five years… And libraries get into loaning e-books.
Barcelona To Get A Hermitage Museum
“The museum will have a permanent collection, ‘which will change every ten years’, a room for permanent exhibitions and one in which “the piece of the month” will be installed, an outstanding work of more than three million pieces that the large Hermitage. The museum will not be a mere franchise his Russian counterpart, but the pieces from St. Petersburg, museográficos other objects will be added to explain great stories.”
Interview With The World’s Greatest Painter
“At 84, the man considered by many to be the world’s greatest living painter—and its priciest, too, at least at auction, where his record stands at $46.4 million for 1986’s Abstraktes Bild, just behind Jeff Koons’s $58.4 million sculpture Balloon Dog (Orange)—is still vigorously creating work. But before he created these paintings, he had barely put brush to canvas in four years.”
Disney Animation Surges As Pixar Declines?
Disney’s rebound has led to increased one-upmanship within the Mouse House. According to one source, “Pixar’s attitude is, ‘We’re Pixar.’ And Disney is like, ‘Well, then, why don’t you have the highest-grossing animated film of all time?’ ”
Does “Devouring” A Book Prove You’re Superficial?
“Two hundred years ago, describing someone as ‘devouring’ a book would have been an act of moral censure. The long, turbulent relationship between reading and eating is invisible to modern eyes, yet in our media-soaked culture, it is more pertinent than ever. The unexamined language of ‘devouring’ idealises one kind of reading at the expense of others, leaving readers impoverished.”