“It has seemed that for the entire 2010s thus far, Facebook has been a place for composers and co. (whether to chat, laugh, share work, share opportunities, discuss musical issues, discuss politics, fight like hell) to come together. The same is true for actors, string players, academics, doctors, and bankers, to some extent, I’m assuming. But for composers, or for the several hundred spread over six continents whom I’m FBfriends with, at any rate, it has functioned as one of the relevant gathering places for those of us who couldn’t make it to the show last night. Our lot, as a rule, doesn’t congregate.”
Blog
The News Media Business Is In Complete Collapse. What To Do?
“There are at least three major trends contributing to this dismal media moment. They all point to the same solution, and it’s something everyone in journalism should know by now: News publishers have to get better at making money outside of advertising.”
British Academics Argue That Museums Don’t Control Copyright On Images Of Work In Public Museums
“The [European] Court of Justice has made it quite clear: for a photograph to be protected by copyright, it must be original in the sense that the photographer has exercised creative choices and thereby stamped the photograph with their personal imprint. A photographer who merely seeks to control light and angles to create an image of a work of art is highly unlikely to have created a copyright work.”
The Most-Anticipated New Opera Of The Year Faces Backlash
The piece has “taken many aback with some startlingly negative reviews as well as bending-over-backward attempts to find some value in a work by a team that has given us operatic masterpieces in the past. Without question, the most highly anticipated new opera of the year — a year in which John Adams turned 70 and Peter Sellars, 60 — “Girls” has also been presented as the first opera of Trump times. The populist spirit of the 49ers, the lack of regard for the environment in pursuit of wealth, along with the rampant racism against Latinos, Chinese and black people has created the expectation of the kind of political opera that the lyric stage has historically been very adept at.”
Canada Wonders: Can You Really “Decolonize” A Country?
“It was singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie who, early in 2017 at outset of the Canada 150 hoopla that offended many Indigenous people, counselled everyone to “Keep calm and decolonize.” But what exactly does that mean? After centuries of contact, can you really tease apart the threads of settler and Indigenous culture?”
The Digital World Isn’t Subverting Democracy, It’s Helping It (Really?)
“Digital technologies are changing politics as we know it, but not because of some inherent or immutable characteristic that stands apart from the world in which they were created. Instead, these technologies have helped an underlying condition, namely growing discontent at marketisation – the privatising of ever more goods, services and social interactions, and the ideologies that justify that process – to find meaningful expression in the formal political arena.”
Holland Cotter: Louvre Abu Dhabi’s Rewrite Of Art History
“The Louvre Abu Dhabi is banking on the theory that pointing out links among a wide variety of cultures will make all art feel more approachable to the global audience it hopes to attract. Once viewers gain the habit of spotting connections, they may come to accept that all cultures are equally valuable and personally relevant. That, at least, seems to be the thinking, and it makes sense.”
Do We Have Time For Utopias? How About Dystopias?
“It is a tough job to reclaim the idea of utopia for the twenty-first century and deploy it in the battle against the neoliberal agenda. But – if we were to want to do such a thing – these are books that could help us. If there is an alternative to a neoliberal future, the imaginative effort required by utopian thinking is a necessary step to achieving that alternative.”
How Restaurant Menus Manipulate Customers
“There is now an entire industry known as ‘menu engineering’, dedicated to designing menus that convey certain messages to customers, encouraging them to spend more and make them want to come back for a second helping.” Reporter Richard Gray ferrets out a few tricks of the trade.
What Allan Bloom Saw In Rejection Of Elites
“Underneath a nonjudgmental relativism, Bloom saw a creeping nihilism: believing that all judgments of value had equal weight, the students ended up not believing or aspiring to much of anything at all. As a result, they no longer aspired to learn the truth, but rather to be “open-minded.” Incapable of treating moral questions and culture as anything other than matters of personal preference, they couldn’t be bothered to take seriously the task of self-reinvention that their education demanded of them.”