“While teaching a design class at California College of the Arts several years ago, Brian Kane noticed that his students often didn’t sit. They instead draped themselves across their chairs or lounges, completely absorbed by their various electronic devices. Sealed off from the world by earphones and entranced by glowing screens, they were as likely to sprawl sideways as to sit up straight. Even in public places, many of them liked to rearrange the furniture and transform those spaces into their own customized zones for working, meeting or socializing.”
Author: ArtsJournal2
Quick! Snap A … Description? Cameras Print Text, Not Images
“Instead of producing an image, Richardson’s camera produces a printout of a description of that image. It works like a regular camera — point and click to shoot — but what’s captured in the viewfinder is sent to the anonymous workers in Amazon’s Mechanical Turk program, who are paid $1.25 per image to write a brief description. When they submit their description, typically a few minutes later, the camera prints it out.”
Think Fast! – And Take Greater Risks
Results are in from “a team of Princeton scientists who thought there might be a causal relationship between the speed of a person’s thought and their willingness to embrace dangerous behavior, such as illegal drug use and unprotected sex.” The answer? Possibly yes.
Here, Guthrie: A Diverse Season In 120 Seconds
Tony Adams, artistic director of Chicago’s Halcyon Theatre: “There is no way any argument could be made that a classical theatre can’t find plays to broaden their season beyond exclusively white men-other than [Joe Dowling] didn’t bother to try. I stopped and thought about it for a couple minutes. Two. I set a timer for one-hundred twenty seconds. I was curious to see if I could come up with a possible twelve play season, without consulting Google or my bookshelf.”
Hey Visitors To London, Don’t Expect Friendliness; Do Expect Curry
As tourists plan to flood London with people for the Olympics, what should they know? A.A. Gill: “London is a city of ghosts; you feel them here. Not just of people, but eras. The ghost of empire, or the blitz, the plague, the smoky ghost of the Great Fire that gave us Christopher Wren’s churches and ushered in the Georgian city. London can see the dead, and hugs them close. If New York is a wise guy, Paris a coquette, Rome a gigolo and Berlin a wicked uncle, then London is an old lady who mutters and has the second sight. She is slightly deaf, and doesn’t suffer fools gladly.”
Cirque du Soleil In Russia In A Knock-Down Fight For Stars [With Video]
“When Cirque du Soleil first set up in Moscow’s Kremlin theatre in February, Russian circuses were nervous about losing their audiences. That hasn’t happened, as the Montreal troupe’s Zarkana differs from the traditional Russian circus fare. However, the Cirque then began hiring away their performers.”
What’s The Point Of A Newspaper, Really?
A recent suggestion that the The New York Times sell information before printing public stories has the media world in an uproar – but what’s the purpose of a newspaper in the 21st century, anyway?
Hugo Fiorato, 97, Longtime Conductor At New York City Ballet
“Mr. Fiorato, who was with the City Ballet for 56 years, was a figure of continuity surpassed only by George Balanchine, who founded it in 1948 with Mr. Fiorato’s mentor, the conductor Leon Barzin. Mr. Fiorato held almost every job the company had to offer, starting as its first concertmaster in 1948. ‘I was concertmaster, librarian; I did everything except sweep the floors,’ he once told an interviewer. ‘It was wonderful to be there in those early days.'”
After A Terrible Year For The Detroit Symphony, Trial By Fire For Concertmaster Candidate
“The appointment of a new concertmaster is always a landmark in the life of an orchestra, but for the DSO the stakes are even higher. A standout hire would signal an artistic and psychological turning point in the drive to rebuild the ranks after last season’s tumultuous strike.”
What Is The New York Times On About With The No One Talks Thing?
“These are the tools, practices, and communities that can make online life not a flight from conversation, but a flight to it. But we will not realize these opportunities as long as we cling to a nostalgia for conversation as we remember it, describe the emergence of digital culture in generational terms, or absolve ourselves of responsibility for creating an online world in which meaningful connection is the norm rather than the exception.”