“The young, who cannot read a text for more than a few minutes without texting, who rely on the web for both their love affairs and their memories of heartache, and who can sometimes find even cinema difficult to take unless it comes replete with electronic feedback loops, are not our future: we, the Gutenberg minds have no future, and our art forms and our criticism of those art forms will soon belong only to the academy and the museum.”
Tag: 10.09.13
Will Computers Kill Urdu Script? Or Save It?
“Can Microsoft and Twitter save the dying Urdu nastaliq script from the hegemony of the Western alphabet and an overbearing Arab cousin?”
Why The Bible Belt Still Loves The Exorcist And Rosemary’s Baby
“These movies passed muster because they didn’t encourage people to dabble in the dark arts; they warned people. More to the point, they acknowledged the existence of God, the influence of Satan, and the truth of the Bible.”
Photographing Nigeria’s Kings
A hundred or so traditional kingdoms once occupied the lands that are now Africa’s most populous nation. Those royal families still exist; their kings still retain some moral authority – and some truly fabulous textiles. Photographer George Osodi has been criss-crossing the country to capture their majesties on film.
QR Codes On Tombstones – The Future Of Mourning?
That’s how it’s happening in Japan and China. “The codes serve multiple purposes: when scanned, they lead to a website with photos and information about the deceased and allow for users to give virtual gifts, like food, incense, or a Buddhist funeral chant.” The websites also serve as a locus of mourning for those who can’t travel to the gravesite – or when, in China, the loved one’s remains are removed and the tomb is reused.
Forget Being Cool – Uncool Is Better For You
“The pursuit of cool winds up an exhausting chase for a quick high, with trendsetters and tastemakers forced to jump from one drug to the next. … Cool is a sword to live and die by, a binary system that pits you against others. It requires not only love, but hate: a rejection of the mainstream. Or the alternative. Whatever.”
In The Mobile Digital Age, What Does “Watching TV’ Even Mean?
“The average time spent by U.S. adults per day using a mobile device in a non-voice capacity is 2 hours and 21 minutes this year, up from 24 minutes in 2010. The study counted simultaneous media use–scanning Twitter while watching a football game, for instance–as time spent both with a TV set and a digital device.”
A Golden Age Of Television? Not In Canada
“There’s a prevailing sentiment in the culture that we’re more than a decade into a new Golden Age of television. The starting point was the arrival of The Sopranos in 1999 and the most recent marker in the ongoing evolution of excellent TV was the series finale of Breaking Bad. What has Canada contributed to this? Pretty much nothing. Look at the last 14 years of Canadian TV and what you see is almost complete creative failure.”
Remembering Stanley Kauffmann, Iconic Critic
“Trends weren’t his job to acclaim. His assignment was to assess individual works of art, and he performed this task with magisterial balance, his forensic intelligence leavened with a lancing wit and an indestructible love for what the stage at its best could be.”
How Arts Journalism Is Failing The Orchestra World
“The good news I bring you is that the bad news that permeates so many discussions of the future is largely false. Unfortunately though, such false messages can be self-fulfilling, and we must not allow our resolve to be repelled by an assault of damaging words.”