It’s partly because, unlike most e-readers, print books can be fetish objects. “Publishers’ production values have soared and bookshops have begun to fill up with books with covers of jewel-like beauty, often with gorgeously textured pages. As the great American cover designer Peter Mendelsund put it to me, books have ‘more cloth, more foil, more embossing, page staining, sewn bindings, deckled edges.'”
Category: AUDIENCE
How Can Theatres Best Sell New Plays, Or New Kinds Of Plays, To Their Audiences?
Basically, says a theatre-maker who had the experience and then did the research, theatres doing what she calls lesser-known work “must paint a detailed picture of the experience with information that appeals to both the practical and adventurous sides of our audience members.”
The Classroom Where It Happens, With The ‘It’ Being Hamilton For Education
These students get to perform history-class-inspired songs on stage at the Rodgers before they see a special matinee of “Hamilton.” WOW. “Ashley Avallos and Angie Salvador from Brooklyn School for Collaborative Studies made an impassioned and moving plea for advancing women’s rights. Their piece, ‘Dont Forget About Us,’ echoed Angelica’s line in the show demanding that Thomas Jefferson ‘include women in the sequel’ to the Declaration of Independence, but took as its main inspiration the words of a historical figure not featured in the play, Abigail Adams.”
The Opera Created, And Filmed, For Streaming On iPads And Other Small Screens
This episodic opera was created, filmed on Alcatraz, and then packaged for serial distribution. All 12 episodes drop online on May 31. Some of the plot … “In composer Lisa Bielawa’s world, cows sing, a ponytailed man plays the hurdy-gurdy in the backseat of a vintage Chrysler Valiant and an escape from Alcatraz is as simple as tossing a knotted sheet rope out a prison cell window and driving off into the night — to Sweden.”
A Return To Complexity? Signs That Today’s Audiences May Want More
“Young people’s brains aren’t experiencing a backward evolution. Their ability to articulate points of rhythm, melody and the flow of words in musical genres they have made or developed themselves prove that, as human beings, our urge for musical expression and facility lies deep. Young people are not afraid of things that need to be worked through. Complexity, curiosity and adventure is the new counter-culture.”
Britain’s Labour Party Promises “Culture For All” Policy
The manifesto identifies the creative industries as “the envy of the world, a source of national pride, a driver of inward investment and tourism and a symbol of the kind of country we are now and aspire to be in the future”. As Britain prepares to leave the EU, it states that Labour will “put our world-class creative sector at the heart of our negotiations and future industrial strategy”.
£2.3 Million Funding For Using Dance To Improve Health
“Previous Aesop research showed how the Dance to Health programmes could address a problem that costs the NHS £2.3bn a year, as the rates of completion for dance-based alternatives to NHS exercise courses are 55% higher. An evaluation of the Dance to Health pilot programme in February 2017 also concluded that dance artists could be trained to deliver classes which were an enjoyable artistic challenge, faithful to healthcare objectives, and would deliver measurable reductions in loneliness for participants.”
What Happens When Computers Get “Better” At Great Art Than Artists?
“If art is defined by human emotions, what might happen once external algorithms are able to understand and manipulate human emotions better than Shakespeare, Picasso or Lennon? After all, emotions are not some mystical phenomenon — they are a biochemical process. Hence, given enough biometric data and enough computing power, it might be possible to hack love, hate, boredom and joy.”
You’d Rather See/Read/Listen To “Junk” Culture Than Art Culture? Don’t Feel Bad…
A critical consensus forms and then is eventually replaced by a new one. What matters in the end is whether you are moved by something or not – it’s the only mark of quality that you can be sure of. To argue for the binning of established canons to make way for the lionisation of, say, Dumb and Dumber and 90210 would be absurd, yet it is just as daft to deny that “low” culture can have a powerful, and therefore equally valid, effect on us.
Why We’re Now In A “Post-Star” Movie World
“We are in the middle of a major transition. One of the great allures of stars, the reason for their success, is their mystery. One person among millions gets to make their dreams come true. You are fascinated by them, yet oddly envious. That is why people throng outside Salman Khan’s house. They want to be him. Or rather, they want the possibility of that dream. They want to win that lottery. But with the advent of social media, winning that lottery has suddenly become so much more accessible! Today, anyone can be a star, truly. You can be an Instagram star, a Twitter star, a Youtube star, a Pinterest star, whatever! Put in enough work, be smart about it, and, in today’s world, you could easily be a star. So why put in so much time and energy into adulating someone else?”