“The new media, with its myriad screens and streams, makes reality so fragmented it becomes ungraspable, pushing us towards, or allowing us to flee, into virtual realities and fantasies. Fragmentation, combined with the disorientations of globalization, leaves people yearning for a more secure past, breeding nostalgia.”
Tag: 07.20.16
‘R&D In The Arts’ – What Does That Really Mean, And What Should It Mean?
“‘R&D in the arts’ seems to be quite a new thing, inspired by the [tech industry], but not motivated by financial revenue. I worry about the arts taking on the mantle, because R&D and innovation are terms with such an overwhelming direction built in to them – a direction in favour of commercial digital products. No one ever asks what the problems are in digital which the arts might be able to solve. The arts are on the back foot. As I often say, why don’t they have dancers-in-residence at Google?”
The Greatest Literary Fraudster In Our Time (So What Is Fiction Anyway?)
Literature is full of impostors and noms de plume, from George Eliot to “Robert Galbraith” (aka JK Rowling), but JT LeRoy is something else. George Eliot never did high-end fashion shoots, or received backstage passes to U2 gigs, or was sent Kabbalah books by Madonna.
The Man Who’s Ready To Bring Mormon Architectural Utopias To Life In Vermont
“Within the community, each person will be allotted just 200 square feet of living space, but apartments will be soundproofed, with Roomba-sized robots that rearrange furniture for different needs and times of day. … Furnishings and possessions not being used will be stored inside 4-by-4-foot boxes that are integrated into the apartment floors and electronically move up and down as needed.”
What Happens After You Have A Star Turn In The New ‘Rocky’ Movie
Tessa Thompson, about Creed: “[It] is not necessarily a political movie, but the way that we had conversations, we thought we were making a really cinema verité about the black experience.”
Practicing Ballet In The DMZ
“Soldier Kim Joo-hyeok, 23, describes the activity as a way to ‘stay calm and find balance, as well as build friendships with my fellow soldiers.'”
Dance As A Fitness Routine? The Benefits Are Many
With “Just Dance,” I am elevating my heart rate, but I am also sidestepping the self. Depending on the song and background images, I am a partying hipster in a floor-length fur (Macklemore, “Can’t Hold Us”), or a futuristic funk dancer (Nicki Minaj, “Pound the Alarm”), or a girl with swinging blond hair at a club. Critics complain that the offerings on “Just Dance” skew painfully toward bubble-gum pop, but it also means that on “Just Dance,” I am forever young.
One LA Neighborhood Fighting Gentrification Resists Artists’ Complicity In Upscaling
“Since PSSST, Boyle Heights’ newest gallery, announced its grand opening (originally scheduled for May 13) the conflict between the art space and local grassroots organizations has escalated to dimensions greater than each of the actual entities by bringing to question the direct and indirect complicity of artists and cultural spaces in the displacement of long-seated, working-class communities.”
Revealed: The Young Lady To Whom Van Gogh Gave His Ear
And that incident wasn’t even the first trauma the poor woman suffered that year.
Digital Comics Thrive As Art Form Flourishes
“Digital comics creators may fit their art to screen proportions or vertical strips. Artists and writers design for panel-viewing apps by making sure each chunk of the page works on its own, so you’re not left trying to remember who got Hulk so mad or what everyone’s looking at up in the sky — and they can use limited views to control pacing and create suspenseful reveals. Going further, formats such as Madefire’s Motion Books combine writing, animation and even sound. None of that invalidates the traditional art form, of course, but there’s always evolution.”