As Crowds Become Unmanageable, Vatican Considers Limits On Visitor Numbers

“Tour guides claimed that at least 10 visitors fainted each day as slow-moving crowds filed through the long and narrow corridor that leads to the most popular attraction, the Sistine Chapel, while others have suffered injuries and panic attacks. … [There are even] fears among tour guides that overcrowding could provoke a stampede unless security policy is changed.”

Virtual Art – Seeing The World As Artists Imagine It Could Be

While virtual art has sometimes elicited eye rolling reactions from art critics and curators, projects like Nancy Baker Cahill’s 4th Wall show that the medium can apply the language of fine art to new media with subversive ends. The artist highlights that if VR/AR technology continues to enable “hyper-violent, militaristic, or pornographic [images], we allow it to be dominated by themes that don’t contribute thoughtfully to culture,”

The Singer And The Clumsy Critic, A Love Story

He tried to fix things by belatedly praising Mr. Fabiano’s performance, but the damage was done. “I said, ‘I’ll see you later,’ and I walked away,” Mr. Fabiano said. That might have been that, had a deus ex machina not intervened in the form of Ann Ziff, the chairwoman of the Met board. She invited them both to her table at dinner.

Studio Turns To AI To Analyze Movie Trailers To Figure Out What Audiences Will Like

Researchers from the company published a paper last month explaining how they’re analyzing the content of movie trailers using machine learning. Machine vision systems examine trailer footage frame by frame, labeling objects and events, and then compare this to data generated for other trailers. The idea is that movies with similar sets of labels will attract similar sets of people.

Many Literary Magazines Are Born To Die

There are so many factors that kill lit mags. “Radical passion often meets practical reality. Sometimes the fire behind great literary magazines is the exact thing that causes them to burn out. Other magazines lose institutional funding, fold because of scandal, or vanish along with their masthead.”

Wait, Why Isn’t Most Of The ‘A Star Is Born’ Music Eligible For The Grammys?

It’s the number one soundtrack everywhere, but filmmakers wouldn’t release the soundtrack before the movie – not even the five days before that would have made it eligible for the Grammys this year. Why not? “The soundtrack really is the story of the film. There are multiple tracks in there that are soundbites from the film and so it was really important that people experience them simultaneously.”

The Locked-Up Russian Opera Director, Working From House Arrest 1400 Miles Away

In Zurich, Kirill Serebrennikov directs Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte, but not with ease. “Through a relay process that can seem closer to international espionage than traditional theater-making — involving files swapped on USB sticks, a lawyer acting as a courier, and extraordinary patience — the Zurich Opera has found a way for the director to retain artistic control from captivity, 1,400 miles away.”

How Did Los Angeles’ Arts Institutions Survive The Great Recession?

There’s no one way to answer that question. “Skeletons of skyscrapers have risen in city’s core, while unemployment rates have fallen. Occupy is gone from downtown, but homeless encampments have taken their place. When historians look back at Los Angeles cultural landscape in the years after the Great Recession — reflecting on the lives of cultural figures like Argote and the well-being of our city’s arts institutions — they’ll find a strange mix of obstacles and successes.”