One influence will certainly be our language’s centuries-old habit of shifting vowel sounds over time. The other will be the huge number of people – well over a quarter of the world’s population – that speaks English as a second language. Here are some educated guesses as to how those influences will take shape. (includes sound clips)
Tag: 09.28.16
Bhangra On The Beach – Livening Up The Gray North Atlantic And Lighting Up The Web
Hasmeet Singh of the Halifax-based group Maritime Bhangra: “It was one of those things we usually do, right? We just go anywhere and start dancing and make a small clip out of it and just post it. … We were like, ‘Okay, this will get like 1,000 or 1,500 views.’ And it looks like it’s going to go 300,000 in a few moments.”
Canadians Working On An Olympic Games For The Arts
“Olympic medals for the world’s best art seems an odd thing to revive, but a brave and no doubt well-intentioned Canadian organization is bringing back the idea of an international art competition nominally tied to or modelled on the Olympics. They hope to hold the International ArtsGames in Montreal in 2018.”
Are We Close To Understanding The Science Of How The Brain Makes Thoughts?
“If consciousness is, as it should be, an organized state of matter, we seem to be lacking an essential component to describe it. For comparison, a building has bricks and pumps and electrical currents controlled by on-off switches flowing through countless wires. It is a mechanical contraption, working firmly within a set of physical laws. We understand buildings, and can build and fix them because we know the underlying physical principles under which they operate. Likewise, it is plausible that we can build brain-like systems having different kinds of experiential awareness like seeing or hearing, and that respond to such stimuli with certain actions. Many robots already do this.”
Seeing Cultural Appropriation And Clueless Privilege In Action, And Calling It Out
African-American artist Damon Davis on the work of Kelley Walker: “I sat in the audience listening to this man meander on and on to the crowd, interjecting the occasional art term like ‘form’ or ‘color,’ but never once giving the slightest explanation for why he used over-sexualized images of Black women and traumatic images of Black men being brutalized by police and dogs. … Now, what if I took pictures from the Holocaust and smeared cream cheese on them and threw them in a frame, and then told you it was a critique of capitalism and an exercise in color and the form of the contemporary modernist landscape?”
Portugal Will Keep, Not Sell, 85 Mirós Repossessed From Failed Bank
“The paintings, estimated to be worth around 35 million euros ($39 million), came under state ownership in 2008 when the government nationalised the failed bank BNP … They were originally set for the auction block at Christie’s but withdrawn after public protest.”
David Shrigley’s Gloriously Monstrous Thumb Unveiled On Trafalgar’s Fourth Plinth
“Huh. As I suspected. The vaunted optimism of Shrigley’s thumbs-up to Britain’s glorious future is undermined by the deathly black hue of his appendage. Then there is the surreal monstrosity of the hugely deformed thumb. At seven metres high this is the tallest sculpture ever put on the plinth and, while that may seem the kind of statistic tour guides reel off, it has genuine relevance to how it works on a square that is also home to Nelson’s Column.”
Where The Big Bucks Are? Actors Go To The Fan Conventions
“Fan conventions, where stars can take home hundreds of thousands of dollars in exchange for a few hours of time, once were the domain of has-beens and sci-fi novelties. But the business has become so lucrative — think $500,000 for Captain America’s Chris Evans or The Walking Dead favorite Norman Reedus to appear — that current TV and film stars are popping up at events like Salt Lake City Comic-Con and Heroes and Villains Fan Fest.”
How Do You Measure Audience Value? Hang Out
“As an audience researcher, I am constantly disappointed about the ways in which core audiences are treated by arts organisations. They are often aggressively marketed, cynically courted and increasingly propositioned for money. But rarely are they treated as equal partners in the processes of meaning-making and engaged with in any authentic or meaningful way.”
The Digital World Has Transformed The Idea Of How You “Own” Culture
“If you are like most consumers you are probably unaware of the more subtle ways that your digital books — and movies, games, and other media purchases — are different from physical copies. That’s because your rights to those digital things are filtered through a maze of intellectual property law and limited by the fine print that you agree to when you buy them.”