“As much as we carp about the increasing digitization of our lives, this isn’t really a new problem. Writing required cord-cutting long before the computer. It’s an act of refusal, of relinquishment, and of retreat, a decision to turn away from the world and its noise of possibilities, to chase instead a signal down the quiet of a page. That work—the deep, sustained kind that yields poems and essays and fiction—can only happen in solitude, and in silence. And that’s the trouble.”
Blog
Why Classical Music Audience-Building Strategies Don’t Work
“Working toward greater diversity in new music is necessary and right. The problem is that we’re putting the cart before the horse. Greater inclusivity isn’t an audience-building strategy—it’s an audience-building outcome. Making inclusivity the focus of strategy actually hurts our efforts. All we do is muddle classical music exceptionalism with easily disproven assumptions about musical taste, in the process blinkering ourselves to certain truths about how people use music in pretty much any other context.”
How Our Neurological Wiring Informs Our Aesthetic Taste
“Scientific evidence suggests that most of what we think we see comes from visual processing, perhaps just 20% comes from the actual input to the retina. Again, what is the evolutionary purpose of this? If we encounter a predator and had to construct what we’re seeing from scratch each time, we’d get eaten. So the brain searches the closest match that is already constructed in memory and modifies it with new input from the eye so we can figure out fast if we need to run for it. Looking at art exercises our ability to innovate images.”
How YouTube Stars Are Making Millions Off Their Fans
The type of shameless promotion that YouTubers engage in on a daily basis is radically different from what Vaccarino had experienced with traditional artists. “When it comes to selling something, with bands and traditional musicians, it’s not their priority. They’re like, ‘How do I make good music?’ And just assume the money will follow. They will be apologetic about selling merch. YouTubers are like, ‘How can I sell as much as possible to these fans who want to be sold to?’”
Want To Be Jealous Of Alex Ross? Here’s What He Got To Hear This Year
The list of remarkable performances and recordings will give you some idea of the musical creativity out there.
What Is “Culture” Anymore? The Answers Are Surprising
“The study found that more than a third of art museum-goers did not think art museums were a cultural experience, and over half of theatergoers felt the same. Audiences were more likely to consider a street fair or exotic food and drink a cultural experience than opera or ballet. Eighty-one percent of respondents said they attend cultural events for fun, while “interest in content” and “experiencing new things” ranked second and third.”
Kurt Vonnegut’s Basic Story Arcs
This archival video features Vonnegut using a chalkboard and his famous deadpan wit to map out three highly familiar narrative arcs that seem to have lost none of their popularity despite countless iterations.
All Of This Year’s Screen Actors Guild Awards Will Be Presented By Women
The motion to prioritize female visibility at the televised event is designed to be a response to the slew of sexual harassment scandals in Hollywood. Traditionally, a man and a women have been paired to present each category’s winner at the SAG awards. The ceremony’s list of presenters have not yet been released.
As Our Machines Get Smarter, Do Humans Need An Upgrade?
Brain augmentation might sound like science fiction, but the technology is already a well-established field of neuroscience. There are noninvasive forms of tech like EEG, in which sensors use electrical signals to communicate with our brains, and cochlear implants that interface with auditory neurons to restore hearing. Brain-computer interfaces already play a crucial role in treating diseases such as Parkinson’s, epilepsy and ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease or motor neurone disease.
The Art Of Book Acknowledgments (Dreary And Mundane, But Sometimes Quite Revealing)
Some revelations are inadvertent, and not especially flattering to the author. In my head, I have an informal taxonomy of acknowledgments, and one species is the Name-Dropper. Do writers know the kind of insecurity they’re betraying when they do their Trump Towers of thanks, their gold-plated word-piles of self-regard?