Iranian-American graphic artist Hamid Rahmanian has combined computer generated background with the centuries-old techniques of shadow puppetry – common in the medieval Near East but since lost – to perform an adaptation of a Romeo-and-Juliet-style episode from the Shahnameh.
Author: Matthew Westphal
A New Academic Journal On Animal Feeling Could Change A Lot – About The Field And The Rest Of Us
“This one, taking advantage of open access and the efficiencies of web-based publishing, threatens to be a massive success. The first issues have been devoted to fish pain (Do they have it? How can we know for sure?) as well as other important topics such as that of animal mourning.”
Anton Chekhov, Experimental Post-Modernist
“Aside from stories that he was writing in a more traditional form, Chekhov’s young, experimental pen wrote stories in the form of census reports, statistical surveys, diary excerpts, stories in the form of lists of mathematical problems, lonely hearts advertisements, mini-plays – he even wrote a one-page love story in the form of a legal deposition, with a place in the upper left-hand corner of the page for a government stamp.”
Picasso And The Making Of ‘Guernica’
“As the most ardent promoter of Spain’s pavilion [for the Paris World’s fair], [Juan] Larrea … realized that the obliteration of Guernica would provide the artist with the very subject he had been seeking. When Picasso claimed to have no idea what a bombed town looked like, Larrea replied, ‘like a bull in a china shop, run amok.'”
A Couple Of Times Critics Sittin’ Around And Talkin’ Broadway
“The theater critics for The New York Times, Ben Brantley and Charles Isherwood, along with the theater editor, Scott Heller, recently compared notes on the year that was, and what it might mean for Broadway’s future.”
Isao Tomita, 84, Pioneer Of Music For Moog Synthesizer
“The weirdest thing about Tomita’s electronic music is that it almost never happened. … He was uninterested in the military marches that he heard on the radio as a young child. His attitude toward music changed when the war ended and his family’s radio started picking up broadcasts from the occupying American forces. Suddenly, jazz, Latin, classical and a host of other exotic genres rushed in to his living room.”
Five Young Egyptians Arrested For Facebook Videos Making Fun Of President
The young men, all between 19 and 21 and members of a satirical group called Awlad al-Shawarea (“Children of the Streets”), “have been accused of ‘inciting anti-government protests’ and ‘insulting state institutions.'”
Amazon Already Runs Its Own Version Of Netflix; Now It’s Starting Its Own YouTube
“With the launch of Amazon Video Direct, open to any video creator, the e-commerce giant will compete head-to-head with Google’s YouTube for video-ad dollars and views as well as other big Internet video distributors like Facebook and Vimeo.”
Would Yannick Really Be The Right Person To Lead The Metropolitan Opera?
Zachary Woolfe: “From its next music director, the Met should want a personal, passionate vision for the repertory as much as an exciting persona and technical chops. … But for better or (I think) worse, he would not arrive at the Met with an agenda, particularly in modern and contemporary music. … Mr. Nézet-Séguin would doubtless give us memorable takes on Otello. Is that enough?”
Cellists – They’re A Bunch Of Damn Troublemakers
“Indeed, if any instrumentalist was going to be involved in a wild international money-laundering scheme, it was probably going to be a cellist. The instrument has a long history of association with rowdy activists, sultry libertines, genre iconoclasts, and all manner of rebellious spirits.”