Social media breaks, or “social media detox,” have become common ways for people to recalibrate their sense of reality and restore their own values. Is the solution here to forgo Netflix, Hulu, Roku, Amazon Prime, and other streaming services so we can get back to our normally functioning brains?
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“Theatre Talk” TV Show Comes To An End After 25 Years
Despite its passionate fan base and access to Broadway’s high-wattage talent, “Theater Talk” has come to close. Its last show aired in July. Susan Haskins, the show’s host and executive producer and a co-creator, said the show ended after a change in leadership at CUNY TV, which broadcast the program, led to a dispute over editorial control.
Ten Years After: Remembering The Recession
A great number of Americans have “moved on.” Their lives are fine, and the Great Recession is just a bad, dimly recalled memory, like a really bad winter flu from years ago. But for a number of us, it was one of the defining events of our lives.
A Test: Can You Tell Which Of These Paintings Was Painted By A Machine?
All six artists participating in the experiment were commissioned to paint a piece inspired by the same collection of 20th-century American abstract expressionists. For Cloudpainter, a painting robot developed by Virginia-based artist Pindar van Arman, the collection became a dataset to train its algorithm. Its final output (painting F above) is a far cry from the geometric, color-between-the-lines art you might imagine from a robot artist. Instead, with dripping colors and blurred lines, the piece looks surprisingly, well, human.
Pennsylvania Wants To Ban Free Book Donations To Prisoners
Pennsylvania’s Department of Corrections is planning to ban free book donations to inmates by mail, claiming that this is a “primary avenue for drugs” to enter prisons. But the move coincides with a renewed push to get prisoners buying into a pricey prison eBook system that offers low-end tablets for $150 and eBooks no cheaper than $3 a read.
Sony Claims It “Owns” Music By JS Bach
Last week, James Rhodes recorded a short video of himself playing a portion of Bach’s first Partita and posted it to Facebook. Bach died in 1750, so the music is obviously in the public domain. But that didn’t stop Sony from claiming the rights to the audio in Partita’s video. “Your video matches 47 seconds of audio owned by Sony Music Entertainment,” said a notice Rhodes received on Facebook. Facebook responded by muting the audio in Rhodes’ video.
The Grand Park NY’s Central Park Might Have Been
By 1856, the commission had adopted a plan by its engineer-in-chief and landscape design expert Colonel Egbert Ludovicus Viele, and they were preparing to start construction on the grand new park. But their plan hit a road bump. An architect named Calvert Vaux had recently relocated to the city and had gotten a glimpse of the proposed design. It was a disaster.
American Orchestras Discover Women Composers
In the wake of the #MeToo movement, and a growing consensus that the creators of the 21st century’s cultural artifacts cannot exclusively be white males, some of America’s most prominent ensembles are programming more works by women than ever before.
How Does A Theatre Weather ‘Hamilton’ At A Rival Venue?
Turns out that sales actually go up, at least for this nonprofit theatre in Utah – though that might partly be because, smart move, they “even rode Hamilton’s coattails a bit, staging a concert version of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s earlier musical, In the Heights.”
How Old Is Too Old For Orchestra Musicians?
“We should expect to see an age-related decline in performance after the age of 40,” the study says. “This is borne out by the answers given by the musicians surveyed. On average, 41 percent of orchestral musicians have noticed at least once that their performance has declined due to age-related factors.”