Members of the Detroit-based collective Complex Movements discuss the connection between technology, performance, and social justice community organizing. – HowlRound
Blog
“Don’t make me go out there alone!” — Leonard Bernstein’s last tango with ‘Candide’
Bernstein’s December 1989 concert performances and recording were his answer to the surprisingly numerous Candide-ologists trying to figure out why a show with such sparkling music had never been a commercial success. And they were so eventful, they only just barely happened — as I saw up close. – David Patrick Stearns
Questions About The Future Of The Vancouver Art Gallery After Its Longtime Director Leaves
The museum has been trying to raise money for a new building for the past ten years and is still a long way from its goal. Kathleen Bartels, who was director for 18 years until last week, had been laboring to get the project done without success. So now what? – CBC
‘An Overwhelming Sense Of Truth And Beauty’ — Simon Callow On Oliver Sacks
“This is an unusual boy, one who had, as he puts it, an ‘overwhelming sense of Truth and Beauty’ when at the age of ten he saw a periodic table in the Science Museum and became convinced that ‘these were indeed the elemental building blocks of the universe, that the whole universe was here, in microcosm, in South Kensington.’ … And it becomes increasingly clear that Sacks was that boy to the very end of his days.” – The New York Review of Books
Study: Overuse Of Computers In Classrooms Lowers Student Performance
“When students report having access to classroom computers and using these devices on an infrequent basis, they show better performance. But when students report using these devices every day, and for several hours during the school day, performance lowers dramatically.” – Pacific Standard
We Tried An Entirely Different Model Of Arts Criticism, And Here’s What We Learned
“We laid out some pretty bold premises when The Commons Crit, a collaboration with Carolina Performing Arts’ Commons festival, began. Here’s how they look from the other side.” – Indy Week (Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill, NC)
New York Times Quits Political Cartoons
Beginning next month, the Times will cease running daily political cartoons in its international edition, editorial page editor James Bennet said Monday in a statement — a move that brings the overseas newspaper “into line with the domestic paper,” which in recent years had ceased running weekly roundups of syndicated cartoons and experimented instead with longer-form editorial comics. – Washington Post
What Did Old English Sound Like?
“No one living, of course, knows exactly what it sounded like, so scholars make their best educated guesses using internal evidence in the scant literature, secondary sources in other languages from the time, and similarities to other, living languages.” And here are some of those educated guesses, applied to excerpts from Beowulf, prayers, and even a casual conversation. – Open Culture
Study Suggests That Human Brains Are Wired For Musical Pitch
“We found that a certain region of our brains has a stronger preference for sounds with pitch than macaque monkey brains. The results raise the possibility that these sounds, which are embedded in speech and music, may have shaped the basic organization of the human brain.” – EurekArt
Raja Feather Kelly: How A Downtown Pop-Queer Experimentalist Became Off-Broadway’s Go-To Choreographer
“One reason, an obvious one, had to do with a close friend. As soon as the playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins started to pass his name along to people in the theater world, … he found himself filling a niche Off-Broadway. ‘I was working on new plays that wanted to have a physical life, but didn’t know how,’ he said.” – The New York Times