“On YouTube some videos have been downloaded tens of millions of times. There is a cat playing the piano , a music video set on treadmills at a gym, a cackling baby. At first there may not seem any rhyme or reason behind their appeal. Yet there are shared characteristics to some viral videos, and companies seeking to advertise their products are keen to decipher these.”
Tag: 11.06.09
Waaah (Eng), Ouain (Fr), Wäh (Ger): Even Babies’ Cries Have Accents
In an analysis of the cries of 60 newborns, half from German-speaking families and half from francophones, researchers found that “cry melodies were distinctive and different. The French newborns tended to cry with a rising melody contour, while the German tots wailed with a ‘falling’ tone, a signature feature in each language.”
Revisiting The Bauhaus
Nicolai Ouroussoff: “A big surprise is how much of the school’s mission still feels relevant, from the effort to come to terms with mind-bending technological advances to the desire to serve an audience beyond the usual cultural elites.”
When Akram Khan Kept Quiet
“In Asian culture, you don’t have a voice. You just accept what everybody says.” The star Bangladeshi-British choreographer, dubbed a “great new hope” of dance, still lives around the corner from his parents and claims he never stood up to anyone in his community: “No, because it’s a form of disrespect. … I disagreed all the time, but it was in my head.”
Why The Julie Taymor Spider-Man Is So Difficult And Expensive
“As this Spider-Man tale opens, the audience sees New York City ‘on fire and in ruins’ as ‘a section of the Brooklyn Bridge ascends with Mary Jane bound and dangling helplessly from the bridge’.” The show’s money troubles mean it risks passing both the Tony deadline and the expiration of the license from Marvel Comics.
For The New Barnes, A New Chief Curator
Judith Dolkart, currently associate curator of European art at the Brooklyn Museum, joins the Foundation as it prepares to break ground on its new home in center city Philadelphia. She will, among her other duties, plan and oversee the special temporary exhibitions the Barnes will add to its program at the new building.
How People Get Addicted To Virtual Reality Games
“Brain scans of avid players of the hugely popular online fantasy world World of Warcraft reveal that areas of the brain involved in self-reflection and judgement seem to behave similarly when someone is thinking about their virtual self as when they think about their real one.”
Why Newspapers Need Editors, Demonstrated In Red Ink
“Earlier this week the Toronto Star announced, among other changes, that it was planning to outsource some one hundred in-house, union editing jobs.” In response, one of those in-house editors took a red pen to the internal memo making said announcement.
Philip Gourevitch To Leave Paris Review
The former New Yorker staffer, author of We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda, succeeded founding editor George Plimpton on the latter’s death in 2003. Gourevitch “plans to return to writing full time.”
Time To Close The Rock Hall Of Fame?
“The Hall of Fame is a notoriously top-down institution, with an elite group of insiders making up a nominating committee that pre-selects their own idiosyncratic idea of the worthy candidates. So all of us lowly peons are only allowed to vote for 5 out of 12 possible candidates, which judging from this year’s nominees makes for slim pickings.”