Tag: 12.17.19

Anne Bogart On The Difference Between Looking And Seeing

Children see naturally because they have not already stored up and processed information about how they are supposed to categorize what it is that they are looking at. They puzzle through, notice and work out each detail with a freshness that radiates both spontaneity and play. As we grow older, many of us lose our ability to see and we begin to accept the assumptions that have accumulated while looking.  – SITI

Our Fears Of A World Shaped By Algorithms

Within the monoculture obsession, there are two concerns. The first is that in the digital streaming era we have lost a perceived ability to connect over media products as reference points that everyone knows… The second concern is that, because of the pressures of social media and the self-reinforcing biases of recommendation algorithms that drive streaming, culture is becoming more similar than different. – Vox

What’s The Best Way To Sell Your Book These Days? Kendall Jenner Being Photographed Reading It

Rarely has the power of “influence” been felt so acutely in an industry in which a media blitz usually involves not much more than a handful of speaking events at local bookstores. For the kinds of people who post Ben Lerner galleys on their Instagram stories to telegraph good taste, intelligence and access, Jenner’s paparazzi images created a sort of cognitive dissonance. – W Magazine

How Ed Harris And Aaron Sorkin Are Interrogating ‘Mockingbird’

Sorkin, playwright of the Broadway adaptation: “I absolutely wanted Atticus to be a traditional protagonist, so he needed to change and have a flaw … It turned out that Harper Lee had [already] given him one; it’s just that when we all learned the book, it was taught as a virtue. It’s that Atticus believes that goodness can be found in everyone.”
Harris, who plays Atticus: “He’s trying to hold on to a belief that’s being eroded slowly but surely.” – The Atlantic

3,500-Year-Old Royal Tombs Uncovered In Greece

“Among the findings inside the tombs were evidence of gold-lined floors, a golden seal ring and a gold pendant with the image of the ancient Egyptian goddess Hathor. The amulet suggests that Pylos” — which is mentioned in The Odyssey — “traded with Egypt during Greece’s Mycenaean civilization, which lasted roughly between 1650 and 1100 B.C. Homer’s epics are set in the latter stages of this period.” – NPR

How Disney’s Idealized Florida Town Became A Nightmare

“Everything about Celebration telegraphed cozy familiarity. Brochures depicted a quasi-fantastical realm of home-cooked meals, traditional family values, and G-rated movies. The civic buildings were designed by famous architects: the theater by Cesar Pelli, town hall by Philip Johnson, the post office by Michael Graves, the bank by Robert Venturi, to name only a few.” – The Daily Beast

Mellon Foundation Pulls Grant After University Of North Carolina Makes Deal With Neo-Confederate Group

In a Letter to the Editor published in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Mellon Foundation President Elizabeth Alexander confirms that funding was rescinded in direct response to the settlement. The university’s decision to protect and display the Confederate statue was especially jarring in light of the proposed grant’s intended purpose: “to develop a campuswide effort to reckon with UNC’s historic complicity with slavery, Jim Crow segregation, and memorialization of the Confederacy.” – Hyperallergic