For a glimpse of that future, look to the world’s largest toymaker, Hasbro. The company is showing off its new Iron Man mask this weekend at Toy Fair, which uses augmented reality to stage a battle against Thanos. Slip on Iron Man’s red helmet and gauntlet, set up the three AR markers around the room, and watch Thanos and his armies surround you. The suit is Hasbro’s first foray into augmented reality, but follows the work of companies like Disney, which introduced its Star Wars Jedi Challenges AR experience last year. The consumer appeal of this stuff is obvious: In AR, you’re not playing as Iron Man. You are Iron Man.
Category: AUDIENCE
If We Can Edit Your Genes Can We Trust Your Talent?
“The notion, then, that we could enhance someone’s “natural” talents by tinkering with their genes just before or just after fertilization is fraught with both practical and moral difficulties. Which gene(s) should we target? Can we be confident of the intended result many years later? Are the risks to a child outweighed by whatever competitive advantage in sport might result?”
Opera Has To Evolve… Or It Dies
“The medium of expressing emotions in hundreds-of-years-old opera is different from the emotions now. People fall in love on Tinder. In the old days we had time to write letters and to wait for weeks; the speed of emotional reaction and interaction is different. I’m not saying we dump opera – far from it – but we’ve got to let opera evolve.”
Obama Portrait Debate Shows Americans Have Difficulty Talking About Art
“The general public tends to assume that contemporary paintings should be easily understandable for anyone with eyes to see them (and for more sophisticated audiences, for anyone who spends time and attention on the work). But this is not the case. Even if you are familiar with the moods, settings and styles of portraits you have previously seen, you are not necessarily equipped to understand Kehinde Wiley’s work.”
The Violent Movies That We Call “Entertainment” And The Real-Life Mass-Killings We Abhor
Michael Phillips: “Whenever there’s another mass murder in our country, action films become a strange and ghoulish experience, beyond whatever the filmmakers have created for our consumption. There are times when the gun fatalities and revised statistics get to you. They’re too much. Too much. There are times when movie slaughter, and extravagant, adrenaline-pumping shootouts, cannot easily be enjoyed.”
Trump’s Proposal To Kill The NEA And NEH Says Volumes About His Views On The Arts
“Americans,” Trump crowed during his State of the Union address, “fill the world with art and music.” And yet, his insistence that support of arts and culture should not be a mission of the government tells us what he actually believes about the arts.
Here’s What Accessible Cities Can Look Like
Hundreds of millions of people with disabilities live in cities around the world. By 2050, they will number an estimated 940 million people, or 15% of what will be roughly 6.25 billion total urban dwellers, lending an urgency to the UN’s declaration that poor accessibility “presents a major challenge”.
Why Are Theatre Program Books So Useless?
Mark Shenton: “I always apply the test I also use on theatre tickets to assess how useful they are: would I pay ready money to have one? And the answer is hardly ever. Yet theatre programmes have become a habit for many. They are part of the theatregoing ‘experience’ and a happy aide-memoire of the show. But, I often find the information I need just as easily online. A front of house notice will typically list the cast at a particular performance – especially important with long-running shows where substitutions often appear. So I simply take a photograph of it.”
New ‘Golden’ Man Booker Prize To Name Best Of All 51 Past Winners
“The new award, announced on Friday as part of the literary prize’s 50th anniversary celebrations, will be judged by five judges and then voted for by the public.” Of course, they’ve done this twice before, and the same book won both times.
Audiences Are Livestreaming Theatre. What Could Be Wrong With That?
You can understand the confusion that could arise in an audience member who, aware that theatre performances are now broadcast live to cinemas via NT Live and the like, thinks they are entitled to act as a private broadcast channel to their friends at home. Theatre invites you to be uniquely ‘in the moment’ but, for many, it’s now important also to capture it so that you own it forever.