“Instead of trawling the back rooms of the country’s pubs for the next Ed Sheeran, what if ‘moneyball’ – the analytical, statistics-based approach successfully used to assemble a competitive sports team – could be adapted to pop music?”
Category: AUDIENCE
The Tricky Feat Of Making Opera Out Of Current Events
“Creating operas out of real events, whether in the recent or more distant past, is almost as old as the art form itself. It began in 1643 when Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea, set in Rome in AD 64, was staged in Venice, though in the baroque and early classical operas that followed over the next century and a half, hard historical fact and more distancing fantasy were frequently inextricably merged.”
Lost In Translation (The Art Of Translating Is All Around Us)
“There is clearly a tension between the varieties of “translation” happening all around us—every moment of every day, truly one of the fundamental activities that hold our world together—and the persistent recycling of platitudes about how this activity, so basic and ubiquitous, is impossible. If the platitudes are recalled more often than translation’s pervasiveness, it is only because translators are usually invisible, their work mysterious.”
How Artificial Intelligence Is Changes The Ways We See The World
“Over the last five years, processing power and huge corpuses of teaching data have given computers the ability to detect emotions and moods. Soon, perhaps, they will be able to recognize a sideline scuffle or a player’s shift in attitude. Combine that with sensors gathering crowd reactions, the movement and changes in velocity for players and passes, historical statistics that provide context for the game and a player’s performance—and now AI is starting to encroach on analysis as well.”
How Neil MacGregor Transformed The British Museum
“Neil MacGregor transformed the reputation of the museum. It is now seen domestically and internationally as playing a vital role in understanding the human world – our shared past and present. And he achieved this without losing intellectual rigour. MacGregor has maintained the respect of scholars, and earned the esteem of modernisers – quite an accomplishment.”
Is “Placemaking” Nothing More Than The New Jargon?
Placemaking sounds good and everyone wants to jump on the bandwagon. Unfortunately, Placemaking, as promulgated by its chief advocate, the nonprofit Projects for Public Spaces, is largely bogus, even though PPS rather presumptuously claims it “has the potential to be one of the most transformative ideas of this century.”
California’s Next Bohemian Hot Spot – In A City You’d Never Expect
James Fallows reports: “‘The Tower District is the bohemia of Fresno, and Fresno is the bohemia of California,’ a Fresnan named Heather Parish told us recently. If she were editing in real time, she probably would have said: Fresno should be the bohemia of our most populous and creative state. Here is what she is talking about and why she could dare say such a thing.”
Reality TV Has Become Less Profitable For Networks. Why? The Internet
“The shelf life for Viacom’s reality shows like “Teen Mom” and “Jersey Shore” is shorter than it used to be, because why watch a reality show rerun when you can watch something on YouTube or Twitch, or play around with Vine and Snapchat, or Clash of Clans or whatever. So the company has to knock down the value it had attributed to those shows in its catalog. The same goes for some reruns the company had purchased from other providers.”
More Genuinely Useful Advice For Classical Newbies: When To Clap At Concerts
As with advice on what to wear, just telling uncertain newcomers to clap when it feels right and don’t worry about shushers isn’t necessarily helpful. Holly Mulcahy offers “some general guidelines I’ve observed both from the stage and as an audience member.”
‘Satirized For Your Consumption’ – Joking Becomes Integral To Public Policy
The CIA launched its Twitter account with self-mockery; the U.S. State Dept. vetted The Interview; Obama’s best promotion of the new healthcare law as with Zack Galafianikis, and he was funnier than the pro comedian at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner – on the night Navy SEALs got Osama Bin Laden, no less. “Comedy [has been] stolen from the professional jokesters by their traditional targets and became, unexpectedly, the new language of power, policy, and politics.”