“Across popular entertainment lately, science fiction, theoretical physics, and spirituality have blended to offer not escapism but wait-there’s-more-ism, offering a tantalizing hint that our perception of reality is too narrow – and that with a little bit of effort, we can see extraordinary things.”
Tag: 01.05.17
Louvre Attendance Down By Over 20% In Past Two Years
As recently as 2014, Paris’s flagship museum had a record 9.3 million visitors – and those numbers were projected to rise to 12 million by 2025. Then came the terrorist attacks.
Did That 1896 Film Clip Of A Moving Train Really Cause The Audience To Run From The Screen In Panic?
“According to the tale, as the silent black-and-white image of a moving locomotive filled a movie screen in Paris, the people in the cinema thought it was going to drive right into them. They panicked, and bolted for the back of the theater.” In fact, that’s probably the movie business’s first-ever urban legend. Eric Grundhauser walks us through the evidence. (includes video)
Miami Herald Eliminates All Classical Music Coverage
It’s already been nearly a decade since the paper laid off its critic, Lawrence A. Johnson; since that time, the Herald has licensed reviews and articles from Johnson’s subsequent venture, South Florida Classical Review. Now the paper has abandoned even that.
To Sing Bess In ‘Breaking The Waves’, Keira Duffy Had To Train, And Eat, Like An Athlete
“I had probably the most rigorous routine I’ve ever had in my professional life for this role. There was a lot of physical conditioning I had to do. It’s a monster role, and the emotional stakes just get higher and higher and that takes an incredible toll physically.”
Is It Even Possible For A Sketch Called ‘The Real Housewives Of ISIS’ To Be Funny?
Well, the BBC tried it, and the resulting tweetstorm was pretty strong – and so was the counterbacklash. (In fact, this isn’t the first time ISIS humor has been tried, although the first practitioners were themselves Syrian.) (includes video)
Do Matching Gifts Help Juice Up Arts Crowdfunding Campaigns?
It seems there was no existing research on that question – so one organization organized this pilot project to find out.
Bringing Dance Education To Homeschooled Kids
Christopher Connolly of Dance Manchester tells how one encounter with a homeschooling parent – along with “a few risks and a leap of faith” – led to a program for a difficult-to-reach community.
Top Posts From AJBlogs 01.05.17
12 Plays of Xmas: 9. The Town Fop by Aphra Behn
‘Art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead.’ WH Auden speaks true – one of the pleasures of this little project has been sitting down with the past. Sometimes, however, … read more
AJBlog: Performance Monkey Published 2017-01-05
DBQ Having Fun In Paris
As the Rifftides staff continues recovering from the holidays and auditions a few dozen incoming albums, let’s follow a lead sent by frequent commenter Terence Smith. Mr. Smith writes from his sanctuary in … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2017-01-05
The Coming Jobs Revolution Will Be Historically Profound. Are Artists Ready For It?
Many experts believe the biggest disruption in our lifetime is about to take place. Automation – robots and artificial intelligence – is going to eliminate a significant number of current jobs, say experts:
A recent study found 50% of occupations today will be gone by 2020, and a 2013 Oxford study forecasted that 47% of jobs will be automated by 2034. A Ball State study found that only 13% of manufacturing job losses were due to trade, the rest from automation. A McKinsey study suggests 45% of knowledge work activity can be automated.
94% of the new job creation since 2005 is in the gig economy. These aren’t stable jobs with benefits on a career path. And if you are driving for Uber, your employer’s plan is to automate your job. Amazon has 270k employees, but most are soon-to-be-automated ops and fulfillment. Facebook has 15k employees and a $330B market cap, and Snapchat in August had double their market cap per employee to $48M per employee. The economic impact of tech was raising productivity, but productivity and wages have been stagnant in recent years.
This will lead to profound changes in how our economy works and how our culture organizes itself. If most people won’t be able to get jobs in the traditional sense, one of the primary organizing principles of humankind – that our ability to survive, our success in life, is determined by the need to earn a living, by the jobs we’re able to get – will change.
As tech leader Ross Mayfield suggests in this LinkedIn piece, the automation of jobs could cause a backlash against technology and the people who create it as wealth becomes even more concentrated in the hands of a few. The original Luddites, hs reminds us, were not just people who had opted out of technology, but actively opposed and tried to destroy it.
The post-jobs world will be a transformation on the order of the industrial revolution, he says.
And artists? It’s at times of profound change in our culture that artists have the most to say. They comment on, critique, draw attention to, and interpret how the world changes in such times. So how will artists anticipate what could be one of the most profound changes in human history?