“The way in the Welsh parliament the public walk over and look down on the politicians. The courts we built in Bordeaux are not prisons, they are places where people can learn about the law. I like the idea of trying to influence society by taking a brief then maybe subtly changing it or looking at it in a new way to see what interesting things can emerge.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Physics Is Hard. So Is Poetry.
Physicist Adam J. Frank on his encounter with T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land: “Sitting there, book in hand, not understanding what I had just read I had to ask myself: is this any different than my experience with physics? … But what does it mean for a poem to be hard? Is it the same thing as when science is hard?”
Guillermo Del Toro’s Problem With Most Special-Effects Shots
“Normally, every FX shot looks like a cool shot. You go out the window, the character’s drinking some wine. You go out the window, you go around the block, into the next tower, out of the tower, into an airplane passing by, and you’re in the lap of a passenger in first class. And all you’re telling them is ‘cool shot, is that real?'”
Do Dogs Think? (Is This Headline Click-Bait?)
Barbara J. King: “Doing a radio interview recently, though, I was reminded that some dog owners are still convinced that dogs don’t think, but instead act on instinct and live tethered to the present, in a moment-to-moment way.”
Sergei Polunin Doesn’t Think Ballet Is Cool (Is That Why He Keeps Running Away?)
“If I had the choice I’d be a boxer or a footballer. Being a ballet dancer isn’t cool. Football, boxing, hockey – they’re cool. And you make more money.”
Meet The Man Behind The Dickens-Dostoevsky Hoax
“When writer AD Harvey invented an 1862 meeting between Dickens and Dostoevsky, it was for years accepted as fact. So why did he do it – and why did he also create a series of fake academic identities?”
A Virtual Tour Of Weird North Korean Art
We didn’t even need to say that it’s propaganda art, did we? There are the 20,000-odd statues of “Great Leader” Kim Il Sung; there’s the $10 million bronze of the late “Dear Leader” Kim Jong Il; there’s the Hollywood-sign-style “Long Live General Kim Jong Un, the Shining Sun” that’s visible from space; and so on.
Kickstarter Provides More Arts Funding Than The NEA
“For 2012, the NEA had a total federal appropriation of $146 million, of which 80 percent went toward grants. Kickstarter funded roughly $323.6 million of art-related projects if you include all design and video-related projects, which make up $200 million of the total. It looks like a shocking disparity between government grants and a technology start up, but here’s why it isn’t surprising.”
Minnesota Orchestra Cancels Summer Make-Up Concerts
“The Minnesota Orchestra has canceled six concerts that had been scheduled for July 20 through Aug. 3 … [The programs] were to feature music originally planned for the regular season, including Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 and Dvorák’s ‘New World’ Symphony, with music director Osmo Vänskä conducting.”
L.A. Times Lays Off Arts Reporter Jori Finkel, And Arts Groups Want Her Back
“It’s not often a newspaper writer makes the news rounds, but when Jori Finkel, the former arts reporter at the Los Angeles Times, was laid off last week, it didn’t go over well with the arts community, resulting in a Change.org petition set up by the Hammer Museum director Ann Philbin.”