Randy Cohen on his annual list: “Changes this year include updating #3 with the BEA’s new Arts in the GDP research, #8 to include a statement about the benefits of the arts in the military, and #10 includes the new Creative Industries data (now current as of January 2015).”
Tag: 03.13.15
Why Are Non-Musicians Running Our Great Opera Houses?
“Sure, some of them will have worked in opera houses for quite a while, learning the ropes on their way up the greasy pole. But I bet I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of opera directors who are musicians in any shape or form. I’ve certainly met very few who can actually read a score.”
Why Nicholas Hytner Is A Playwright’s Dream Director
Alan Bennett (The Madness of George III, Talking Heads, The History Boys): “To a playwright, what immediately commends him is the amount of work he puts in. Directing can be quite a lazy profession with the play once roughed out and in preview left to coast along or settle down. Not with Nick; he never lets up.”
When The Bots Take Over
It’s understood now that, beside what we call the “real world,” we inhabit a variety of virtual worlds. Take Twitter. Or the Twitterverse. Twittersphere. You may think it’s a stretch to call this a “world,” but in many ways it has become a toy universe, populated by millions, most of whom resemble humans and may even, in their day jobs, be humans. But increasing numbers of Twitterers don’t even pretend to be human. Or worse, do pretend, when they are actually bots.
Report: China Is Now The Largest Market For Art
“The value of art traded reached an all-time high, worth an estimated €51bn last year. Art fairs accounted for around 40% of total revenue made by dealers last year (around €9.8bn), though the costs of taking part in them is steep.”
Could Canada FINALLY Be Making A Move To Produce Better Quality TV?
“There is a vast hunger for challenging, layered, complex, innovative drama that grips, tests and provokes an audience. In Canada in the past 15 years we have made almost diddly-squat in that arena.”
Tired Of The Grammar Police? Here’s Ammunition
“Instead of having some rule book of what is “correct” usage, they examine the evidence of how native and fluent nonnative speakers do in fact use the language. Whatever is in general use in a language (not any use, but general use) is for that reason grammatically correct.”
Bassem Youssef, “Egypt’s Jon Stewart,” In Exile
“His life in Egypt became ‘an unpredictable roller coaster,’ he says. ‘And I’m getting old for amusement parks.'” And yet: “I refuse to put myself in a position where I’m some sort of fugitive. If you’re dissing the country from outside, the brand will lose credibility.”
When Book Titles Have Zero To Do With Book Contents (A Problem Of Fiction)
“There’s something to be said for allusive titles: they can be intriguing and draw you in. And obscure titles at least make a change from the current trend for The Woman Who Climbed out of Her Car and Mowed the Lawn.”
Frei Otto Created ‘Transparent, Democratic’ Architecture In Reaction To The Horrors Of The Third Reich
Mies van der Rohe’s “famous dictum ‘less is more’ is one Otto believed in to the core of his being. The duty of the architect was to make as little impact as possible on nature and to learn from natural design – in Otto’s case, from the structures of crab shells, birds’ skulls, spiders’ webs and bubbles on the surface of water.”