Instead of the traditional towers, “ninety-six hand-painted gold lanterns encrust the roof of the Australian Islamic Centre in Newport. Fitted into each lantern is a different coloured glass that filters light into the mosque through triangular shaped skylights. As the sun moves through the day, the lanterns illuminate a different colour. In the morning yellow streams in, representing paradise. Through the middle of the day, blues (symbolising sky) and greens (nature) filter in. In the afternoon the lanterns draw in red (blood for strength).”
Tag: 08.08.16
De-Queering, And Re-Queering, Sappho
There’s a centuries-long (millennia-long, really) tradition or scholars and writers trying to remove the small-l lesbianism from the great poetess of Lesbos. Lesbian classicist Ella Haselswerdt looks at those attempts and takes them apart, if not down.
Digital Reproductions Versus Real Art – Here’s Why This Battle Matters
“A danger arises when amateurs and bogus experts aren’t able to tell the difference between what’s real and what’s reproduced. Worse, they might see the digital copy and decide that it is not worth the effort to see the original. They might not think that the work is better, but it is unarguably more convenient to access.”
Are Humans Fundamentally Selfish Or Cooperative? Wrong Question, It Turns Out
“Those options are derived in large part from philosophy and classical economic theory, rather than data. In a new paper, researchers have flipped the script, using observations of simple social situations to show that optimism, pessimism, envy, and trust, rather than selfishness and sacrifice, are the basic ingredients of our behavior.”
Every Literary Plot, Ever, In Alphabetical Order
Okay, maybe not every single one. Boris Kachka: “There’s William Wallace Cook’s chart-crazy Plotto, first published in 1928; there’s crisp guides like Christopher Booker’s The Basic Seven Plots and Ronald B. Tobias’s 20 Master Plots; there’s even a couple of computer programs – many, over centuries, have tried to count the ways to tell a story. With a little help from those, here is a far-from-comprehensive encyclopedia of every archetypal plot we know.”
Hulu Didn’t Fail To Make Free Online TV Work, It Succeeded In Killing It
Will Oremus: “After eight years, Hulu is turning off its free TV service. Viewers will now be required to sign up or log in to its subscription service, Hulu Plus … The reason, I suspect, is not that the service failed to achieve Hulu’s goals, but that it succeeded. And by Hulu’s goals, I mean the goals of its corporate owners: Disney-ABC, NBC Universal, Fox, and now Time Warner.”
Robert Page, Revered Symphonic Choral Conductor, Dead At 89
“For all of conductor Robert Page’s accolades, there may be no better example of his prowess in choral music than this: He improved a Robert Shaw choir.”
Three Saints In One Portrait – It All Depends On Where You Stand
“From the left, Saint Francis of Assisi decked on his Franciscan order habit clutches a crucifix with a hand bloody with stigmata; from the right, Saint Francis of Paola holds a paper that reads ‘Charitas.’ And looking straight on, there’s a weeping Saint Peter looking up at a blue sky where his airy halo mingles with the clouds.” The trick is an effect called anamorphosis.
Has Los Angeles Become A Hotbed Of Contemporary Music?
“A grassroots new music community (or as ‘grassroots’ as anything which is tied to higher education can be) is in a true dialogue with the larger artistic culture, and the promise of the LA Philharmonic to make Los Angeles a contemporary musical destination seems to have finally taken root. An LA aesthetic has emerged, and I can’t help but notice a bit of pioneering Wild West in the raucous brew.”
Is Putting Shakespeare Into Modern English Really A Good Idea?
Linguist John McWhorter and Rutgers professor Jack Lynch, author of Becoming Shakespeare: The Unlikely Afterlife That Turned a Provincial Playwright into the Bard, discuss the ‘sacrilege” issue. (podcast)