“There are fruitful overlaps with contemporary classical composition, experimental rock music and improvisation. Sound artists use everything from sine wave generators to lectures, wildlife recordings, public space, bell ringing, electromagnetic fields – even the odd folk song.”
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
Gustavo Dudamel On Leadership
“When you are a leader, you have to learn how to work because you have to convince the people in front of you of your ideas. When I started to conduct in professional orchestras when I was 22 or 23, [I had to] convince people with a lot of experience, with the tradition of sound or the idea of specific piece. What I want from the musicians is to enjoy what they are doing.”
Iraqi Cinema Comes Back To Life In Baghdad
“[F]or the first time in a long time, in a once-grand theater almost filled to its capacity of 1,800 seats, Iraqis watched themselves and their postwar experiences portrayed in film by another Iraqi.”
Why Patrimony Claims Are Seldom Simple
“[T]he general question, looting and tourist dollars aside, is why should any objects necessarily reside in the modern nation-state controlling the plot of land where, at one time, perhaps thousands of years earlier, they came from? The question goes to the heart of how culture operates in a global age.”
LA Mayor Abandons Scheme To Cut Arts Grants
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa had intended to shift $415,000 to four organizations he’d chosen. “Restoring the money to the $2.76-million arts grants program would be good news for 35 organizations that would have lost their grants even though they had been approved through the standard application process in which panels of experts review and score each proposal.”
The Letdown That Is Britain’s Shanghai Expo Pavilion
“After queuing for up to five hours in the blazing heat, all expectant Chinese visitors have discovered inside the prickly pavilion is … well, nothing. No enticing British exhibits, no music, no welcome drinks and snacks, not even a film, much less a presentation showing the best of British design and innovation, or all the zillions of things the British buy from the Chinese.”
Can Architecture Really Help Cancer Patients Heal?
The man behind a cancer charity whose facilities are designed by high-profile architects “has come under fire from both the scientific community, who question the validity of his claims (or media distortions of them); and the design community, who wonder if Maggie’s Centres aren’t injecting more architecture into small healthcare facilities than they strictly need.”
Examining Enron‘s Crimes Against Broadway
“Its alleged transgressions are, of course, rather less heinous than the real Enron Corporation’s multibillion-dollar fraud, which led in 2001 to the collapse of the once-mighty company. According to Matthew Byam Shaw, one of the producers, Enron the play was guilty of confusing and upsetting conservative Broadway audiences.”
The Twitter Archive’s Value To Historians
“Although the [Library of Congress’] acquisition might seem to be a capitulation to frivolity and short attention spans, historians say, it’s actually about how digital archives such as this are shaping the future of history.”
On The Unnecessary Blandness Of Comic Book Movies
“If the Hollywood studio assembly line is high school in a John Hughes movie, superhero films are the jocks — benighted beneficiaries of grade inflation and reflexive fan boosterism.”