Movie flops cost Australian taxpayers “$90 million over the past seven years with up to 85 per cent of projects getting Australian Film Commission grants never returning a cent from box office receipts.”
Tag: 04.13.08
The Machine That Can Tell What You’re Thinking
“In a study published Sunday in Nature Neuroscience, researchers using brain scanners could predict people’s decisions seven seconds before the test subjects were even aware of making them. The findings raise profound questions about the nature of self and autonomy: How free is our will? Is conscious choice just an illusion?”
Why High Art Didn’t Make It On The Vegas Strip
When the Guggenheim Hermitage Museum and the Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art opened on the Strip, both set out to feed art to the masses. Neither was enough to justify a stop in Las Vegas for the savvy cultural tourist. But that was never the plan. The plan was to insert art where art hadn’t been, make a lot of money doing so and add cachet to the resorts.”
Architecture Not Meant To Last
“Architecture has entered another of its periodic bouts of fascination with impermanence. Maybe it’s the anxiety produced by doomsday predictions about the state of the environment and, lately, the economy. Maybe it’s the quicksilver quality of digital culture, closer in character to sand or water than bricks and mortar. Whatever the source, architects are playing up the idea of temporariness, and even finding solace in it, to a degree not seen since the 1960s and ’70s.”
The Broadway Hollywood Connection
“Broadway would have to shutter many of its houses if it couldn’t turn to the movies for a steady supply of material. The practice has been around for decades, albeit at relatively modest levels. What was once a Hollywood-to-Broadway trickle became a torrent as the millennium approached. Two distinct events marked the change.”
Enough With All The Biennales?
So Denver is launching its own biennale. “At least 50 major biennials take place internationally, and more are being added to the list all the time, making it easy to wonder: How many biennials are too many? And with each new one, isn’t the drawing power of such events becoming increasingly diluted?”
Joffrey Ballet Strides Confidently Into Change
The company is moving into a new home. It’s finances are okay. And a leadership transition is so far going smoothly…
What’s Neuroscience Got To Do With Art?
“The literary critic as neuroscience groupie is part of a growing trend. We have become accustomed over the past half-century to critics sending out to other disciplines for “theoretical frameworks” in which to place their engagement with works of literature. The results have often been dire, the work or author in question disappearing in a sea of half-comprehended or uncritically incorporated linguistics, mathematics, psychiatry, political theory, history, or whatever. Why do critics do this?”
Curators Quit Over Politicians’ Art Choice
Scottish politicians want to acquire a sculpture for the parliament. Curators of the public collection say the work is not up to the standard of the rest of the collection. So who’s winning the standoff?
Nicholas Hytner: Schools Have Failed Us In The Arts
“A generation have been deprived of the tools they should have been given to open a door [to the arts] that can otherwise seem quite daunting.” He said dumbing down productions was not the answer to the crisis.