“To answer this burning question, we turned to Raj Patel of the design and engineering consulting firm Arup Group and Kate Wagner of the viral architecture blog McMansion Hell. She’s also studying acoustics at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University, synthesizing her interests in music and architecture. What did we learn?”
Author: Douglas McLennan
Why Political Documentaries Are Filling Our Screens
If audiences are getting tired of the formulaic story arcs of blockbuster movies, then there’s a safe haven in political documentaries, which are enjoying a renaissance.
Study: World’s Most-Popular Museums Ranked
A study by the Erasmus University School of Management in Rotterdam surveyed tourists and residents to determine which museums were most popular. Interestingly, the biggest museums were not ranked at the top.
The Internet Promised To Democratize News. Instead We Have Fake News. But We’ve Seen This Before
“The openness that was said to bring about a democratic revolution instead seems to have torn a hole in the social fabric. Today, online misinformation, hate speech, and propaganda are seen as the front line of a reactionary populist upsurge threatening liberal democracy. Once held back by democratic institutions, the bad stuff is now sluicing through a digital breach with the help of irresponsible tech companies. Stanching the torrent of fake news has become a trial by which the digital giants can prove their commitment to democracy. The effort has reignited a debate over the role of mass communication that goes back to the early days of radio.”
How The Art Of TV Spread Everywhere
“For nearly a century, television, like the weather, has shaped our behaviors, our moods, and our desires in ways we don’t always comprehend.”
Netflix’s Content Binge And What It Means For The Video Revolution
“Within five years, television has changed from the prescribed, September-to-May schedule that has existed since the birth of the medium to a never-ending blitz of new shows that networks struggle to keep up with. And even though Netflix hasn’t toppled the similarly staid film calendar as quickly, it could mark the beginning of the end for movie theaters, if the company’s success so far with TV is anything to go by.”
The Personal Essay – Inelegant Language As A Badge Of… Well, Something
“For a certain breed of personal essayist at work today, there exists a necessary and desirable trade-off between aesthetic clarity and moral complexity; a bargain premised on the depressing notion that words are always insufficient to the task at hand and so we may as well stop trying to choose the clearest or most precise ones. The adjective that best captures the conditions of this bargain is messy.”
We Barely Pause To Look At Art In Museums. So Why Do We Spend So Much Time On Selfies?
“Mobile technology encourages us to forego the Enlightenment Era experience and its accompanying promise of profound self-knowledge. With the invisible audience of social media always lurking in our mobile phones, we are tempted to permanently affix a scrim of personal narrative over the artwork we see and experience. Do art selfies correlate with lower levels of engagement with the artwork?”
Taylor Swift’s New Single Crushes YouTube, Spotify Records
YouTube said Saturday the song’s lyric video broke a record for that site, with more than 19 million same day views. Swift crushed the previous record set by “Something Just Like This” from The Chainsmokers featuring Coldplay, which received 9 million views in 24 hours.
The Smithsonian Plans To Shut Its IMAX Theatre. It’s A Puzzling Decision
The Washington-based Smithsonian has decided to trim its fat by replacing its impressive facility with a restaurant. To little surprise, the decision to give priority to hot dogs over hot docs has not been popular in the educational-film world.