“In 1906, he unveiled this idea to the IOC: the Olympic Games should include gold, silver and bronze medals in five categories of the arts: architecture, literature, music, painting and sculpture. Like sports competitors, the artists participating in the new “Pentathlon of the Muses” were supposed to be amateurs.”
Tag: 05.09.16
Anton Chekhov, Experimental Post-Modernist
“Aside from stories that he was writing in a more traditional form, Chekhov’s young, experimental pen wrote stories in the form of census reports, statistical surveys, diary excerpts, stories in the form of lists of mathematical problems, lonely hearts advertisements, mini-plays – he even wrote a one-page love story in the form of a legal deposition, with a place in the upper left-hand corner of the page for a government stamp.”
Music Has Become Too Disposable. Hence The Slow-Listening Movement
“Why vinyl? Commitment. In this mid-second decade of the 21st century, music is being taken for granted on a collective scale. An entire generation of music listeners will never pay for music, nor do they believe that they should. The long form music medium has taken a back seat to song culture, yet the average person only listens to a song for approximately 24 seconds before deciding if it’s worth their time to continue to listen.”
Chicago’s Baroque Band To Cease Operations
“Garry Clarke, the period-instrument ensemble’s founder and artistic director, had previously announced that he would leave his position at the end of the current season. In a statement posted on the Baroque Band website, board president Evan Trent said the board voted unanimously to shutter the group after Clarke’s departure.”
To Solve The Most Difficult Problems, Maybe Try Solving Something Else Instead? (It’s Called Lateral Innovation)
“Watching what my colleagues do, and understanding why they do it, has convinced me that brute force alone will not innovate the technologies that will enable human civilisation to become an effective arbiter of this planet and her resources. The solution requires tapping into the same impractical, impatient, passionate drive that spurred the video-game-fuelled GPU revolution. And although that kind of lateral innovation cannot be instituted forcibly, it can be recognised and fostered.”
Another Selfie Disaster: Tourist Climbs Onto And Destroys Statue At Historic Lisbon Train Station
“[A] 24-year-old man climbed onto the pedestal of the stone figure of Dom Sebastião, which stood in a niche flanked by large, ornately decorated horseshoe-shaped arches at [Rossio] station’s Neo-Manueline-style façade.” Of course the statue couldn’t support the man’s weight; it toppled to the ground and shattered.
‘Antiques Roadshow’ Punks Itself, Assessing 1970s High School Art Project As $50,000 1890s Jug
“Owner Alvin Barr had bought the pot, decorated with six beast-like faces, at an estate sale in a barn in Eugene, Oregon, for $300. He was naturally short of breath when Antiques Roadshow’‘s bespectacled expert appraiser Stephen L. Fletcher (specializing in clocks, decorative arts, folk art, and furniture) revealed its alleged market value.”
Today’s Hot Trend In Website Design? ‘Web Brutalism’
“All of these sites – some years old, some built recently – and hundreds more like them, eschew the templated, user-friendly interfaces that has long been the industry’s best practice. Instead they’re built on imperfect, hand-coded HTML and take their design cues from ’90s graphics.
A New Retro Machine For Writing
“The screen isn’t really for staring at like a computer screen, but just for glancing toward to verify a word or to get one’s bearings while writing. While it takes a bit of getting used to, the touch-typist eventually stops looking at the screen entirely, and begins instead to look around the environment. I can’t overstate how liberating this feels.”
When People At Parties Ask Me About Being An Actor, Here’s What I Tell Them
“Your work-life balance will be perfect because there is no distinction between the two. … Get used to early mornings and late nights. There is no luxury of being an owl or a lark. You have to be both, and be fit at all sorts of times of day to produce deep emotions or light-hearted frivolity at the drop of a hat, whatever you actually feel. Ten or 20 times over if required.”