Arts To The People (In The Villages)

One place of great growth in the arts? In the UK, in 2002/03, the country’s 40 rural touring schemes staged more than 3,000 professional shows to a quarter of a million people. Since the creation in 1997 of umbrella body the National Rural Touring Forum (NRTF), performances have doubled. “Village halls are places where, far from the nearest focus group fretting about access or elitism, real life takes place. Gigs are packed with people, because whole communities – farmers, retired people, young families – turn out to what is a major event in their social calendar.”

Why Logic Misfires In The Brain

Why do people often make decisions that seem to go directly against their interests? “Neuroeconomics, while still regarded skeptically by mainstream economists, could be the next big thing in the field. It promises to put economics on a firmer footing by describing people as they really are, not as some oversimplified mathematical model would have them be. Eventually it could help economists design incentives that gently guide people toward making decisions that are in their long-term best interests in everything from labor negotiations to diets to 401(k) plans.”

Experience Music Project: The Promise Fades

Five years ago, expectations for Seattle’s Experience Music Project were high. But “as the museum’s fifth anniversary approaches, things aren’t going as planned: All rotating exhibits have been canceled or frozen, and of the roughly 250 people employed by EMP, 14 percent are temps who fear their contracts won’t be renewed because attendance is half of what was expected. There’s nothing to indicate that Seattle’s interest in EMP is growing — between 2001 and 2003, admission revenues were down 46 percent.”

Angkor Looting Increases

Looting at Angkor Wat has increased in the past six months. “One of the astonishing aspects of the Angkor sites is their diminished nature at the hand of modern man. Amid the grandeur, empty pedestals, headless carvings and missing lintels cast an aura of indelible loss. The sudden cascade of tourists – one million foreign visitors came to Cambodia last year, a vast majority to Angkor – brings many risks: overcrowding, dwindling of the scant local water supply, a cheapening atmosphere.”

Our Disappearing Movie History

“When you visit a well-stocked video store these days, it seems the full history of commercial cinema awaits your perusal, either on DVD or VHS. But this plenitude is illusory, a kind of cinematic Potemkin village. Indeed, in the United States, which has churned out the most movies of any nation over the past 100 years, it’s estimated that 50 per cent of the features produced there before 1950 have disappeared, a result of the effects of technological obsolescence, neglect, financial hardship and inadequate archiving. For films produced before 1920, the figure is 80 per cent.”