“Variable 4 is the brainchild of composer James Bulley and erstwhile computer scientist Daniel Jones. The pair met when they were shortlisted for the New Cross Art Prize in 2008 … This led them to the idea of a sound art installation where the music played was composed by contemporaneous weather conditions.”
Tag: 07.06.11
Britain’s Poetry Society In Chaos, Britain’s Poets Up In Arms
“Disgruntled poets channelled William Carlos Williams yesterday when they delivered a red wheelbarrow carrying members’ signatures to the Poetry Society, demanding its board of trustees explain what lies behind a recent spate of high-level departures.”
RSC Removes Dead Rabbit From As You Like It
The acclaimed Royal Shakespeare Company staging of As You Like It “included a scene where a dead rabbit is skinned and beheaded on stage. The moment was meant to underscore Shakespeare’s description of the no-nonsense nature of country life.” Country life is too much for New York audiences, it seems.
Who Was Cy Twombly
The critic Robert Hughes called him “the Third Man, a shadowy figure, beside that vivid duumvirate of his friends Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg.”
Guangzhou’s Amazing New Opera House
“It says something about the state of architecture today that the most alluring opera house built anywhere in the world in decades is in a generic new business district at the outer edge of this city, has no resident company and a second-rate program.”
Frank Gehry Finally Makes It In New York
“What Gehry, evergreen at 82, has been building up there on the site of a former parking lot on the border of New York’s financial district, close by Brooklyn Bridge, is an $875m (£543.3m), 870ft, 76-storey residential tower, clad in heroic, sculpted folds of stainless steel. It houses 903 rental apartments – none are for sale – with prices ranging upwards of $2,630 a month, and is due for completion in five months’ time.”
The Cultural Meaning Of Harry Potter
“Fourteen years on from the Smarties Prize, Rowling’s creation remains a cultural touchstone. For many of her fans, young and old, the arrival of the final film in the $6.4 billion franchise, four years after the publication of the final book, is a moment of closure as significant as the break-up of the Beatles.”
The Computer As Culture Machine
“The networked computer is an amazing device, the first media machine that serves as the mode of production (you can make stuff), means of distribution (you can upload stuff to the network), site of reception (you can download stuff and interact with it), and locus of praise and critique (you can talk about the stuff you have downloaded or uploaded). The computer is the 21st century’s culture machine.”
Texting While Watching – Is It A Psychological Disorder?
“People are silently firing up their smartphone screens in darkened theaters everywhere. At the movies. During plays. At concerts. And it shows no sign of going away. That compulsion is real, and there are a number of societal, psychological and physiological reasons more and more people are reaching for their smartphones without giving it a second thought — frequently to the irritation of those around them.”
Boston’s Oldest Continuously Operating Theater Goes Dark
The Colonial “has weathered world wars, economic downturns, and changing tastes. But it now faces an unexpected shutdown because of failed negotiations between Emerson College, which owns the Colonial, and Broadway Across America-Boston, which has presented such popular touring musicals as “Mamma Mia!” and “Sweeney Todd” while leasing the 1,704- seat theater over the last decade.”