Over time, arguments and judgments about what constitutes ugliness in architecture – whether it be incompleteness, incongruity or incorrectness – have leached out beyond the profession. Staged in courtrooms, parliamentary committees and public inquiries, strident debates about ugly buildings have influenced the development of technology, the letter of the law, church teaching, the context of criticism, the role of the state and even monarchical privilege. – The Guardian
Blog
Is Audible Violating Copyright By Letting Readers Read Along While They Listen?
Although Audible said Captions was “designed primarily to fill an unmet need in education” by allowing students listening to a book to engage more fully with the work, publishers feel the intention of the program is moot and that providing the text violates their copyrights. – Publishers Weekly
‘When Harry Met Sally’ And The Invention Of The ‘High-Maintenance’ Woman
“According to the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang, it was When Harry Met Sally that popularized the term high-maintenance in American culture. … An assessment that is also a rebuke, high-maintenance is one of those breezy truisms that is so common, it barely registers as an insult. But the term today does precisely what it did 30 years ago, as backlash brewed against the women’s movement: It serves as an indictment of women who want.” – The Atlantic
The Long Road
Here’s a list of problems that sounds way too familiar to me in my work attempting to get arts organizations to understand the long road that needs to be walked to build relationships. – Doug Borwick
Propwatch: the takeaway cartons in ‘the end of history…’
I love food, but I love cooking even more. So it was remarkably upsetting to see food repeatedly announced yet never enjoyed in Jack Thorne’s new play the end of history… at the Royal Court. Each of the three acts takes place at a meal that is destined to remain uneaten. – David Jays
Rossini goes commando in Teatro Nuovo’s ‘La Gazza Ladra’
I’m a longtime Rossini skeptic, but his rock-star status during his lifetime couldn’t have been a fluke. Could the key to making his operas (beyond the two or three popular comedies) appealing lie in historical performance practice, as happened with Handel? In this case, the answer is yes. – David Patrick Stearns
Ten Years Ago A Neuroscientist Said He Could Build A Human Brain Within Ten Years. It Didn’t Happen
Henry Markram’s goal wasn’t to create a simplified version of the brain, but a gloriously complex facsimile, down to the constituent neurons, the electrical activity coursing along them, and even the genes turning on and off within them. From the outset, the criticism to this approach was very widespread, and to many other neuroscientists, its bottom-up strategy seemed implausible to the point of absurdity. – The Atlantic
Museum Workers Are Beginning To Organize For Better Pay
“Working in a museum can sometimes seem like a service industry for the wealthy. Middle people in museums used to think they were part of the top bracket. Now they’re part of the bottom bracket, or at least don’t have anywhere to go. You have this kind of perfect storm,” he added: “stagnated wages, working within an environment of great wealth inequality, job insecurity.” – The New York Times
New Consortium To Commission Dance Works For Art Galleries Across Britain
“CONTINUOUS Network, originally a partnership between Siobhan Davies Dance in London and BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead,” and now expanding to include two more dance companies and five more galleries, “will present six new co-commissioned dance works by 2022, and tour eight existing ones, with the aim of reaching 75,000 people live or online over the next three years.” – Arts Professional
Texas Theatre Founder Katherine Owens, 61
Thirty-five years ago, Owens and co-founder Raphael Parry established what may have been North Texas’ first, literally underground theater. They christened it the Undermain because its home was – and still is – a basement in Deep Ellum at 3200 Main. – Art & Seek