“I have come to believe that affordable housing efforts need to always be inclusive of artists, but should never be exclusive to them. By not connecting these still too-often siloed conversations, we are doing a disservice to both artists and the housing sector itself. “
Category: issues
Online Ticket Services Are Battling Billions Of Bots
“According to David Marcus, the head of music at Ticketmaster, last year Ticketmaster’s platform successfully defended against 5 billion bot calls. For a company that sells 100 million tickets each year, that’s a staggering ratio—and it means that even a 1 percent failure rate would mean half of their tickets are sold to bots.”
A Little Piece Of France Has Sprung Up In Harlem
“French-speaking Africans have settled and opened businesses on and around West 116th Street since the 1980s, with Petit Senegal lending the bustling thoroughfare a distinctly international air with passers-by in flowing boubous, shops selling phone cards for cheap calls to Africa, and Franco-African restaurants and vegetable stands offering tropical products like hot peppers, plantain and palm oil. But since the 1990s, a small French expat community, attracted by the romanticism of Harlem, its strong sense of community and colorful history, as well as by comparatively lower real estate prices, has sprung up, and, inevitably, so have French restaurants.”
William Kentridge Sets Up Arts Space For Artists To Fail
The artist has called his foundation the Centre for the Less Good Idea—a reference to the process of creation, which often sees artists derailed from exploring their initial idea and focusing on “secondary ideas that emerge during the process of making”, he says.
Why Our Voice-Command Intelligences Are Just As Racist And Sexist As We Are
Yeah, blame the ol’ garbage in, garbage out problem: “It may not be the fault of the programmers, the team at Princeton University reports in the journal Science. It may just be that the body of published material is based on millennia of biased thinking and practices.”
TS Eliot Had Very Specific Ideas About The Function And Role Of Criticism
What makes a critical judgment true is still a quandary. Eliot and F.R. Leavis exempted themselves from “interpretation,” which Eliot declared to be “only legitimate when it is not interpretation at all, but merely putting the reader in possession of facts which he would otherwise have missed.” This sentence marks a typical rhythm in Eliot’s critical mind: he tends to say that an exalted something is nothing but something mean to which it may decently be reduced.
‘Chocolate-Covered Broccoli’ – The Problem With 1990s ‘Edutainment’ Games
“In the infancy of computers, educators quickly figured out that computer games could be a great vessel for both education and entertainment. Problem was, the educators were always better at the teaching part than the game part. Today’s Tedium, in the midst of practicing its home-row keys, ponders why that was. (Includes the story of “the tutor who became a multi-millionaire edutainment innovator because she went to the wrong restaurant”)
Does Dynamic Ticket Pricing Kill Sales To Some Shows?
“Sure, dynamic pricing maximises the income potential for a hit show (with the corollary of high prices driving away regulars), and potentially allows extra seats to be filled at lower prices on quieter nights. But it also leads to the situation where prices seem to start particularly high to allow for later movement, but in the meantime blows the opportunity to sell to the less convinced at a reasonable price.”
Out Damn Ticket Surcharge!
“At the Birmingham Stage Company we recently went public about our decision to pull out of future presentations at Leeds Grand because of the £3 booking fee and £1 restoration fee that is levied on all tickets. This means that schoolchildren seeing our production of Gangsta Granny by David Walliams for £10 are then being asked to pay another £4 on top. This effectively amounts to a 40% surcharge on every ticket.”
This City Branding Campaign May Make You Laugh, But It Won’t Make You Roll Your Eyes In Contempt
“A new campaign out of Chattanooga, Tennessee dubs the city ‘Literally Perfect’ with a series of delightfully demented mini-musicals.” Laura Bliss explains why it’s “better than it ought to be.”