Blog

Stripping Away The Trappings Of Art – Why It’s Important

Art is naive. There’s something painfully innocent about the attempt to forge a meaningful statement out of nothing; to stand up in front of people and sing or play or speak with all your heart, knowing you may look foolish, knowing you may spectacularly fail. Our big institutions, the mighty choruses and orchestras and theaters that offer Verdi Requiems and King Lears, generally insulate us and themselves from this kind of failure

Internet Of Things Is Powering The Next Broadcasting Revolution

The monetization opportunities IoT offers broadcasters are many, but the most obvious is the various forms of data they will have access to, such as demographic, location, behavioral and user preferences, coming from a wide range of devices and systems. Broadcasters will be able to put together detailed consumer profiles and use them to deliver real-time, personalized content across multiple screens and devices.

Kids’ And Young-Adult Lit Join The Resistance

“Children’s books have always been political, of course — that’s why they are fixtures on lists of banned or censored books. … [But] if the old image of a writer for children was a wise-child genius in the mold of Maurice Sendak — one who spoke up for kids and when necessary challenged the political powers that be, but indirectly — these days, children’s authors might not only hold signs at protest marches, they may also volunteer to strategize for a State Assembly race, or even run for office.”

The Court Battle Over The Archive That Wasn’t Even Supposed To Exist (Kafka’s)

“It is only appropriate, given the subject matter, that … all parties in this fracas have reasonable claim to Kafka’s papers yet also clearly shouldn’t be anywhere near them. The story [author Benjamin] Balint tells is one of an interminable trial between doomed parties, in which physical struggles morph into questions about identity, self, and existential belonging. If only there were some author whose name is now an adjective used to describe exactly such stories!”

Battersea Arts Centre’s Fascinating Restoration After A Fire

“We call it scratch architecture,” says architect Steve Tompkins, referring to the process of scratch theatre pioneered at BAC, where ideas are tested out live in the early stages of development, with audience feedback used to evolve the performance. “It’s not about a perfectly authored finished product, which is a difficult idea for architects to stomach,” he adds. “But we wondered if we could do a parallel process by insinuating ourselves into the productions. What would it mean for us to relinquish tyrannical control over the project?”