It is exceptionally unusual to find a theatre that charges playwrights to read their script through conventional submissions. But look around at contests, competitions, workshops, residencies and more, and you’ll spot submission charges without having to look too hard. – The Stage
Tag: 09.10.20
Team Digitally Recreating Venice To Preserve It
They have used a LiDAR (light-detection and ranging) scanner, which sends out a pulsed laser light towards the target object and measures the time it takes the laser to return. It calculates the distance the light has travelled, and plots that point in a digital 3D space. The LiDAR has recorded inscriptions so high up they cannot be read from the ground. – The Art Newspaper
New York’s Ice Dancing Company Takes To The Concrete
“So what happens when there’s no ice and the rinks are closed? During the coronavirus pandemic, the figure skaters of Ice Theater of New York have found their flow by trading ice for concrete and blades for wheels. They’ve taken to the streets — and parks and playgrounds and basketball courts — with inline skates.” Gia Kourlas reports. – The New York Times
Beirut’s Cultural Community Is In Tatters
The port of Beirut explosion left close to 200 dead, thousands injured and more than 300,000 people homeless, but it also attacked the very heart of the cultural community of the city. The quarters most affected—Gemmayze, Mar Mikhael and Ashrafiyyeh—had previously been spared much of the full-scale destruction of the Lebanon’s long civil war between 1975 and 1990. – The Art Newspaper
The Need For Facts, The Threat Of Feelings
When it comes to interpreting the world around us, we need to realise that our feelings can trump our expertise. This explains why we buy things we don’t need, fall for the wrong kind of romantic partner, or vote for politicians who betray our trust. In particular, it explains why we so often buy into statistical claims that even a moment’s thought would tell us cannot be true. Sometimes, we want to be fooled. – The Guardian
Giant Sculpture That Sings — Flight 93 National Memorial Is A Massive Wind Chime
To mark the place in Pennsylvania where the fourth plane went down on 9/11/01, architect Paul Murdoch and his team designed the Tower of Voices, a 93-foot-tall open-air structure with 40 specially designed and tuned aluminum chimes, one for each passenger and crew member. Carolina Miranda talks to Murdoch and others about the incredible technical and aesthetic (and, yes, political) challenges that building the memorial posed. – Los Angeles Times
Minnesota Public Radio Fires Its Only Black Classical Music Host
Garrett McQueen said he was taken off the air after his shift on Aug. 25. He was then given two warnings — one of which was about his need to improve communication and the other warning was for switching out scheduled music to play pieces he felt were more appropriate to the moment and more diverse, McQueen told MPR News. – MPR
How Does This Classical Music TV Series Attract Millions Of Viewers? It’s Made Like A Cooking Show
Each episode of Now Hear This “manages to turn its exploration of a single subject into a hybrid of travelogue, mystery, history, cultural study, documentary and performance — all with … intricate webs of narrative that connect composers across episodes and eras.” Showrunner Harry Lynch and host Scott Yoo freely acknowledge that they were inspired by the approach of food-TV stars such as Anthony Bourdain. – The Washington Post
#CancelNetflix Becomes A Thing As Anger Mounts Over Film Sexualizing Young Girls
“Controversial French film Cuties — about a young Senegalese girl in Paris who joins a ‘free-spirited dance clique’ to escape family dysfunction — has spawned a new backlash against Netflix by critics who allege it goes over the line in portraying children in a sexualized manner.” – Variety
TikTok Says It’s Paying Out Hundreds Of Millions To Video Creators. Some Of Those Creators Are Ticked Off
It seemed like very good news when the company said it was setting aside $200 million to compensate the users who make its mini-videos. It seemed even better news when TikTok raised the amount to $1 billion in the U.S. and at least $1 billion more overseas. Now some of those creators say they’re getting a few dollars a day even when they get six-figure view numbers; others say their traffic mysteriously drops after they sign up. Many say the program is far from transparent. – Wired