“The more a field is run by a system, the more that system creates incentives for everyone (employees, customers, competitors) to change their behavior in perverse ways—providing more of whatever the system is designed to measure and produce, whether that actually creates any value or not.”
Tag: 01.06.14
How MTV Changed The Way Movies Look
All kinds of “social ills” have been blamed on MTV – elongating the period we consider “youth” for example, as well as homogenising it – but a charge much less contestable is simply its influence on the way film and TV looks.
Some New Year’s Resolutions For The Theatre: Enough With The Thumbs!
This year let’s make fewer prescriptive lists that perpetuate thumbs up/thumbs down approaches to theater. These lists kill off the idea of abundance and suggest the beauty of theater rests in simple notions of good and bad.
That $7 Renoir She Bought at a Flea Market? It Was Stolen From Our Museum
“A small Pierre-Auguste Renoir landscape painting has set off a dispute between a major American art museum and a woman who said she purchased the painting for just $7 at a flea market in 2009. The Baltimore Museum of Art said the Renoir was stolen from its premises in 1951.”
New Egyptian Pharaoh’s Tomb Found
“The tomb of the Egyptian pharaoh King Sobekhotep I, believed to be first king of the 13th Dynasty (1781BC-1650BC), has been discovered by a team from the University of Pennsylvania at Abydos in Middle Egypt, 500km south of Cairo.”
How Radical Is Mason Bates’s Music for Orchestra and Electronics, Really?
“Everybody gets so hung up on, ‘Oh my God, there’s electricity involved’,” says Bates. “But really, this is just part of the evolution of the orchestra, which I find to be a limitless medium. It’s like the world’s greatest synthesizer.”
Madrid’s Street Performers Must Now Audition
“A new noise reduction law that took effect New Year’s Day prohibits amplifiers and requires buskers to move along every two hours and stay 75 yards away from the next crooner. Musicians also must now pass an audition to be granted a free, one-year renewable permit to perform outdoors. Those who don’t pass muster could face fines for disturbing the peace.”
French Interior Minister OKs Banning Comic for Antisemitism
“Interior Minister Manuel Valls said he had advised local prefects of police that Dieudonné’s shows could be banned if they are deemed to present a threat to public order” – and one mayor has already done so. “But a ban is complicated legally in light of France’s powerful constitutional provisions on the freedom of speech.”
Having Been Banned for Alleged Antisemitism, French Comedian Threatens To Sue
“The French comedian Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala, who has become notorious for vitriolic outbursts against Jews and use of the controversial quenelle – allegedly a quasi-Nazi salute – threatened legal action on Monday after officials banned his show.”
This Ballet Is Garbage (No, Really)
“One of the gems of the 2013 Edinburgh festival fringe was a family show that was created, literally, out of rubbish – a ballet set to Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune which was performed by a cast, a litter even, of plastic bags.”