It’s not simply that romance novels are “bubble gum for the mind” — there’s plenty of that available in just about every medium and style around. In fact, romance novels appeal largely to a particular demographic, and that’s for a particular reason. – JSTOR Daily
Tag: 02.11.19
How Music Gives You The Chills
“Neuroscientists have some ideas of about where these [physical responses] come from — essentially neurological reactions to being pleasantly surprised … Music’s ability to trigger moods, emotions, and memories make it a tool that could help treat patients struggling with anxiety or depression, especially when these conditions are related to other physical ailments, and even types of dementia.” – Quartz
‘Melancholia: The Diamond’ – Lars Von Trier Wants To Recreate All His Films As Gemstones (With Virtual Reality Attached)
Yes, seriously: the Danish director “intend[s] to turn all 13 of the films he’s made so far into diamonds and to present them at art institutions across the globe. … A museum visitor is invited to wear a virtual reality helmet and step inside an enlarged rendition of the same double diamond, and to stand for a moment inside its silent, glittering core.” – The New York Times
Dance Meets Urbanism — Could Choreographers Help Create Better Cities?
“Ellie Cosgrave, a lecturer in urban innovation at University College London, is collaborating with Theatrum Mundi to look at how choreographic methods could improve urban engineering. Choreographers and engineers have some key things in common, she says: they both design materials and experiences through time and space.” – The Guardian
How Saudi Arabia Is Trying To Change Its Image Through Culture Festivals
The weekends revolve around the concerts, held on Fridays. There are sometimes other notable events, like hot-air balloon rides. Mr. Bocelli performed on the same weekend as a well-known horse race that drew royalty from around the Gulf region. – The New York Times
Why Scientists Are Rethinking The Whole Idea Of Animal Consciousness
This idea that animals are conscious was long unpopular in the West, but it has lately found favor among scientists who study animal cognition. And not just the obvious cases—primates, dogs, elephants, whales, and others. Scientists are now finding evidence of an inner life in alien-seeming creatures that evolved on ever-more-distant limbs of life’s tree. – The Atlantic
Kahlo: It’s Fridalandia in Brooklyn
I enjoyed seeing the Brooklyn Museum’s Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving, but the exhibit was about her, not about her art. (That was its goal, and it succeeded at its goal.) The balance between her life and her art is, as ever, askew. — Judith H. Dobrzynski
Dancing Community
It wasn’t the usual impersonal voice reminding those of us sitting in the Joyce Theater to please turn off our cellphones, Instead, we who were waiting to see Camille A. Brown and Dancers perform her ink heard a muted, but excited babble and a voice that I took to be Brown’s. — Deborah Jowitt
Accessibility and its discontents
When I started blogging a decade and a half ago, I took for granted that it would be essential to draw a bright line between the things I talked about on line and the things I kept to myself. Many of my millennial friends, by contrast, seem not to draw that distinction. — Terry Teachout
A Two-Piano Encounter
A welcome surprise: I had no idea that veteran pianist Fred Hersch and the relatively new piano star Sullivan Fortner had worked together. — Doug Ramsey