Last month, a team from the digital agency AKQA and the Misk Global Forum attended several panels at the World Economic Forum and used each discussion as inspiration to illustrate a job that could exist by 2030. Many of the jobs seem more like science fiction than reality, but a few are actually pretty grounded in where technology seems to be headed.
Author: Douglas McLennan
Why Isn’t The Orchestra World More Diverse? Because It’s Built That Way
Systemic discrimination occurs when biases like racism and sexism cut across unique organizations. It’s closely tied to, but distinct from, actions we associate with overt bias—a conductor claiming that men are better on the podium or an orchestra defending its discrimination against women and musicians of Asian heritage. Rather, systemic discrimination relies on the abdication of individual responsibility for its consequences, thus rendering it passive and plausibly deniable. In the world of orchestral music, “the system” sustains discriminatory practices even when individuals within it claim to be progressive.
We’re Quickly Becoming A Post-Text World
This multimedia internet has been gaining on the text-based internet for years. But last year, the story accelerated sharply, and now audio and video are unstoppable. The most influential communicators online once worked on web pages and blogs. They’re now making podcasts, Netflix shows, propaganda memes, Instagram and YouTube channels, and apps like HQ Trivia.
Australian Broadcaster To Break Up Historic Music Library And Ship It To Samoa
Guardian Australia revealed last week that the ABC is breaking up its historic music and reference libraries and making 10 librarians redundant to free up floor space and save on wages. Sources say management plans include packing up all 22,000 books in Sydney and Melbourne – apart from a few “special items” – and sending them to Samoa. The books have been targeted because management wants the library space for the IT division. But insiders have mocked the idea, saying developing countries do not always want discarded books because of the high cost of transporting and storing them as well as question marks over their relevance.
Watch The Unveiling Of Michelle And Barrack Obama’s Official Portraits
Barrack Obama called the process of sitting for a portrait “torturous,” noting that as far as he knows he’s the first person in his family to have a portrait done. “I tried to negotiate less gray hair, smaller ears,” Obama joked at the unveiling. “Maybe the one are where there were some concessions … his initial impulse may be in the work may be to elevate me … mounting me on horses … and I had to explain I’ve got enough political problems without you making me look like Napoleon.”
Audible Commissions Playwrights For “Audio Theatre” Project
Audible CEO Don Katz acknowledged that radio dramas have been around for nearly 100 years, but he emphasized that what Audible is creating is something different. It’s performative audio for the digital era, and Katz said the contributions of these playwrights could be transformative to industry’s landscape, which already includes established purveyors of recorded theater such as L.A. Theatre Works.
The Music You Like Is Greatly Influenced By The Year You Were Born
“For this project, the music streaming service Spotify gave me data on how frequently every song is listened to by men and women of each particular age. The patterns were clear. Even though there is a recognized canon of rock music, there are big differences by birth year in how popular a song is.”
Five Things To Know About The Mellon Foundation’s New President
Elizabeth Alexander has been closely involved in one of the most important trends now shaping arts philanthropy: a growing focus on using arts and cultural grantmaking to advance social justice. You can bet that she’ll push Mellon to step up its own funding along these lines. It also seems likely that we’ll see a more powerful axis between Ford and Mellon that extends the influence of both institutions in the arts and cultural space.
Santa Fe Opera Restrutures And Appoints New General Director
Robert Meya proposed to the search committee that he be considered as part of a management “troika” that would divide administrative, artistic, and musical responsibilities among three people. This differs fundamentally from the company’s historic model, in which the general director has assumed lead responsibility for all of those areas. The Opera’s board is authorized to appoint only the general director and, as a matter of policy, does not act directly in other staffing decisions. Meya is accordingly being hired as general director with the understanding that his first act of business is to name Toronto’s Canadian Opera Company’s general director Alexander Neef to the newly created position of artistic director and Santa Fe Opera’s chief conductor Harry Bicket to be the company’s music director. The three members of the management team have all been acquainted with each other for years.
Time To Leave Bad-Acting “Geniuses” Behind
Roxane Gay: “We can no longer worship at the altar of creative genius while ignoring the price all too often paid for that genius. In truth, we should have learned this lesson long ago, but we have a cultural fascination with creative and powerful men who are also “mercurial” or “volatile,” with men who behave badly. There are all kinds of creative people who are brilliant and original and enigmatic and capable of treating others with respect. There is no scarcity of creative genius, and that is the artistic work we can and should turn to instead.”