“The most significant effort is the Resident Commissioned Artist Program: Each year, one mid-career artist will be given the rare package of a salary, health benefits, a two-year residency and a commission.”
Tag: 07.12.11
Fiscally, San Francisco Opera’s Ring Cycle A Hit
“According to the [company], the four-opera Wagner masterpiece staged as 14 performances in June and July sold 44,055 tickets – 99.96 percent capacity – and generated $7,236,673 at the box office.”
Amazon.com’s Position On State Taxes: Unfair, Unethical And Powerful
“It’s an argument between reason and emotion, between your brain and your gut. Amazon has no intellectually sound arguments against collecting taxes from residents – by all ethical and civic standards, its position is unsound. Instead, Amazon is counting on our emotions prevailing – on loyal, tax-savvy customers like me lashing out at our price-hiking legislators.”
Did The Inca Actually ‘Write’ Using A System Of Knotted Cords?
The Inca “have long been considered the only major Bronze Age civilization that failed to develop a system of writing … In recent years, the question of whether these khipus [knotted cords] were actually a method of three-dimensional writing.”
Miranda July Will Predict Your Future
“Miranda July is the kind of artist who switches media about as frequently as most of us replace toothbrushes, bouncing from performance art to visual art, to movies to fiction. Now she’s taking on the craft of fortune-telling” and is offering her services to public radio listeners.
Surprise! Fans Help Small Video Rental Stores Survive
“To some surprise, a stalwart bunch of stores are paying their bills, paying small staffs and in some cases turning a profit–buoyed by New Yorkers with rarefied tastes, or just a soft spot for the corner shop.”
The New Star Of The Beijing Skyline
“The CCTV headquarters may be the greatest work of architecture built in this century. Mr. Koolhaas has always been interested in making buildings that expose the conflicting energies at work in society, and the CCTV building is the ultimate expression of that aim, beginning with the slippery symbolism of its exterior.”
Has Hollywood Figured Out A Way To Do Without Stars?
“Judging from this summer’s output of star-free studio movies, the major difference between the sports world and Hollywood is that showbiz moguls have actually found a way to promote their product without having to rely on the costliest element in the talent equation — the star.”
Premium On-Demand Movie Rental Deal A HUGE Flop
“It turns out that consumers have balked at spending the $30, figuring that most of the available movies were hardly worth it and being savvy enough to know that if they waited another 50 or 60 days that they could easily rent the same movies for a couple of bucks.”
New Gen Video Games Ask Players To Make Moral Choices
“Game makers are crafting more sophisticated story lines and creating characters that evolve based on their experiences within a game. It’s an attempt to interest new customers and reverse a decline in video game sales as the maturing business fights for people’s attention in the face of new devices such as the iPad.”