Tag: 09.06.17

Our Music Is Incredibly Diverse. But With Globalization How To Keep It From Becoming Generic?

“The engagement with music is one of the most universal activities of humans that does not have a direct link to our survival as a species. Nobody ever died from music depravation, yet we work and worship to music, dance and court to music, make love and relax to music, rejoice and grieve with music. With the developments in migration, travel and technology over the past 70 years (which in retrospect we will probably regard as the most significant period of musical change of the past two millennia), two important things have happened.”

Condé Nast’s ‘Slow Dismantling’ Of The New Yorker’s Cartoon Bank

Bob Mankoff, until recently the magazine’s cartoon editor, had the idea in 1992 to make a business of collecting and licensing all the submitted cartoons that weren’t accepted for publication. Under his stewardship, the Cartoon Bank’s business thrived (especially once the Web came along), with revenues at one point reaching $7 million annually. Half of those revenues went to the cartoonists, giving their often-meager incomes a badly-needed boost. Then, in 2008, Mankoff handed off the running of the Bank to Condé Nast. Reporter Seth Simon tells the sad story of what’s happened since.

An HBO Cinematographer Talks About How To Properly Light The Faces Of Black Actors

“Any brown person who’s taken a selfie in the club can tell you cameras aren’t made for us. Yet in Insecure‘s club scenes, dark-skinned protagonists like Yvonne Orji’s Molly continue to impress. You can thank Ava Berkofsky, the show’s director of photography, for that. … So how do you make a show look like a piece of art while also doing justice to black faces? The answer is a special whiteboard and a light dab of shiny makeup.”

Making A Living As A Writer Was Always Precarious. Now Evidence It’s Getting Worse

“Recent initiatives by the European Commission as well as Irish and English governments begin to recognise an alarming state of affairs for the contemporary writer. A European Commission report indicates that Irish and British writers are disadvantaged compared to some of their Euroland brethren. In Ireland a controversial pilot scheme announced in June acknowledges Irish writers as self-employed and thus permitted to seek jobseeker’s allowance. Meanwhile in the UK, the Arts Council of England (ACE) has told of its “concerns that something significant is occurring” in the realm of literature.”

The Sad (Unnecessary?) Decline Of The Cartooning Business

“Almost a decade ago, these artists—freelancers who face stiff competition for 15 slots each week in the print magazine—could count on licensing deals for substantial passive income. Some received monthly checks as high as $8,000; others regularly saw one or two thousand dollars. Today, even those who saw the highest royalties receive only a few hundred dollars per month.”

The Winner Of The 2017 Carbuncle Cup Is –

  • the one we here thought was the least bad of the finalists. (We agree with the vast majority – 78% – of Building Design readers, who chose a different candidate.) But the judges’ votes for the UK’s worst building of the year went to a development near London’s Victoria Station; one judge describes it as “two large blocks sliced and diced to create to create a series of angular volumes drunkenly leaning on each other … [with] a headache-inducing moiré pattern when viewed from the side.”

American Music’s Elder Statesman: George Walker At 94

“What perhaps makes Walker’s story even more unusual is that while he is now arguably the eldest statesman among still-active composers, he began his career as a child prodigy. He started studying the piano at the age of five, composing as a teenager, and had become something of a cause célèbre by his early 20s. He made his New York piano recital debut at Town Hall at the age of 23 in a program of mostly standard repertoire, which also featured three of his own compositions.”