The concept of cultivating plays was perfectly in line with the values of our maker-based community, and it was undeniable that Nashville has an appetite for new works. They embraced my play in no small part because they saw the playwright behind it. Like local honey at the farmer’s market, where it was made, how, and by whom matters to this town. They desire to connect with the person behind the product and to talk together about its taste. After the initial festival, new works exploded across the city. Local theatres started programming new play premieres as part of their seasons, the Nashville Ballet and even the Nashville Opera made commitments to original productions, and the Ingram New Works Festival thrived.
Author: Douglas McLennan
The Key To Understanding Complexity? Scale
“The history of each branch of science can be divided into three phases. The first phase is exploration, to see what nature is doing. The second phase is precise observation and measurement, to describe nature accurately. The third phase is explanation, to build theories that enable us to understand nature. Physics reached the second phase with Kepler, the third phase with Newton. Complexity science as West defines it, including economics and sociology, remained in the first phase until about the year 2000, when the era of big data began.”
You Know What Taste Is? An Algorithm
Philosophers in the 18th century defined taste as a moral capacity, an ability to recognize truth and beauty. “Natural taste is not a theoretical knowledge; it’s a quick and exquisite application of rules which we do not even know,” wrote Montesquieu in 1759. This unknowingness is important. We don’t calculate or measure if something is tasteful to us; we simply feel it. Displacing the judgment of taste partly to algorithms, as in the Amazon Echo Look, robs us of some of that humanity.
The Fascinating (And Enduring) Conspiracy Industry Around Leonardo Da Vinci
A vast quantity of Leonardo’s notes and manuscripts survives, filled with his thoughts on such themes as the motion of water and human anatomy. But there are no intimate letters; there is no emotional self-revelation.
Canada’s Local News Problem – A Role For Public Broadcasting?
I believe the CBC should make a big push to fill the yawning gaps in local news and cultural production created by the decline of private sector providers. I think it should do so even though it will harm some of its competitors because doing nothing won’t save them. Local news is too important to the functioning of our local democracy and our local communities.
The Museum Test: Amazon’s Second HQ City Must Have A Great Museum
You can’t help noticing the correlation. Of the 238 cities and counties that applied for consideration, plenty have the population (over a million), the pleasant environs and the basic infrastructure Amazon seeks. But if they don’t also have an exceptional art museum — and preferably more than one — those cities didn’t make the cut.
Actors Union Gives Up Using “Gypsy”
The union that represents stage performers announced this week that it would cease using the title “Gypsy Robe” to describe one of its most cherished insider rituals — the passing of a colorful patchwork garment from one chorus to another on a Broadway show’s opening night — citing the potential offense to Roma people.
How The World Turned Off Mid-Century Architecture
Buildings long deemed passé and unsuccessful can suddenly seem fresh and intriguing to a new generation, just as yesterday’s tacky decorative designs can become tomorrow’s next cool thing. This has been evident in the steady postmillennial flow of monographs on mid-twentieth-century architects who have undergone a downward critical reversal akin to that of Yamasaki—especially Saarinen, Edward Durell Stone, and Paul Rudolph, none of whom now commands the high artistic respect they all enjoyed around 1960.
CBC Is Digitizing, Then Destroying Eight Decades Of Audio/Video Archives
The Canadian Broadcast Museum Foundation says the public broadcaster’s English service earlier this month began destroying acetate transcriptions, as well as audio and video recordings that span eight decades, after converting the master copies into a digital format. The foundation asked the CBC earlier this year for time to find a suitable space to archive and preserve the material, but says it was turned down.
Philip Glass Talks About His Life In Music
When I do concerts I often give talks to students. They get them together, and I talk to them in the afternoon, and we talk about music. Not too long ago one young fellow, he said, “Tell me one thing that I can take away from this talk that I’ll remember and that’s important.” And I said, “No, I’ll give you one word.” He said, “What’s that?” I said, “Independence.”