“[It’s] a device that made millions of devices that work similarly but are slightly different bend to its will. In the age of IFTTT, Alexa, Zapier, and Siri, this device has a surprising amount of value and deserves to be studied. And,” writes Ernie Smith, “I’m just the guy to do it.”
Tag: 05.25.17
‘A Doll’s House, Part 2’: How Playwright Lucas Hnath Put Together The Script
It was by no means a matter of presenting a finished piece to the director and cast: in fact, the actors – especially Chris Cooper, who’s used to working in film – were astonished at how much they were allowed to shape their characters’ lines. Peter Marks reports on the process, which leaned heavily on what Hnath calls “scraps.”
‘Of Course It’s A Sculpture – It’s A Downward Sculpture Rather Than An Upward Sculpture’ – Anish Kapoor Talks About ‘Descension’, His Whirlpool
“One thing that makes it a sculpture is that there’s obviously artifice to it. It is artifice posing as a natural phenomenon. It’s obviously been made, but the fiction is that it hasn’t been made. That tension is an important part of the work.”
Did The NEH Just Surrender To Its Own Abolition?
Earlier this week, in response to the budget the Trump administration submitted to Congress, the National Endowment for the Humanities released this statement: “The White House has requested that Congress appropriate approximately $42 million to NEH for the orderly closure of the agency. This amount includes funds to meet [existing] matching grant offers … as well as funds to cover administrative expenses and salaries associated with the closure.” Is the NEH giving up on its own existence? Not really, no, as Jillian Steinhauer reports.
Curtis Institute Orchestra’s Big BBC Interview Cut Short: They Had To Evacuate The Building
The Curtis Symphony Orchestra, on tour under conductor Osmo Vänskä, had arrived in London and were being featured on BBC Radio 3’s live music-news-and-talk program, In Tune. A small group had just played part of a Mozart flute quintet, and a graduating violinist was about to play a duet with the school’s president, Roberto Díaz, when the announcement came …
Scotland’s National Orchestra Gets A New Music Director
Danish conductor Thomas Søndergård first appeared with the RSNO in November 2009 as a last-minute replacement for a sick conductor and went on to lead lauded performances of Shostakovich’s Symphony No11 in Edinburgh and Glasgow. He was appointed to the position of Principal Guest Conductor in 2011 and since then has appeared with the RSNO up to four times each season.”
How Consumer Culture Took Over Everything
Both “Less is more” and “More is more” are the catchphrases of a consumer society faced with unimagined plenty. Following World War II, “Less is more” suggested unease with mass abundance: restraint became an emblem of refinement. Two decades of uninterrupted prosperity later, “More is more” poked fun at its abstemious parent. It is also a fitting description of the way we live now.
Was “Cool” Ever Really Cool?
In its origin, cool was a creation of African-American jazz musicians to face the pressure of Jim Crow arrangements during a time when the United States was an unembarrassedly racialist white society. At various points in its history, cool was, in Dinerstein’s language, “the aestheticizing of detachment,” “an emotional mask, a strategy of masking emotion,” “a public mode of covert resistance,” “a walking indictment of society,” “relaxed intensity” played out through the jazz musician, who was “global culture’s first non-white rebel.”