Filed by Lance at 10:22 pm under General, Shameless Plugs, The Arts
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Today, the applicants for early admission at the Institute for Arts Entrepreneurship had our auditions and interviews.

In case you haven’t heard me preach about the IAE, it’s simultaneously the missing ingredient that artists of all disciplines have been searching for, a part of a larger discussion of the future of American work, and a promising path to a thriving creative economy. The thing I was always missing in school was any business or entrepreneurial sensibilities. I trained in both the hard sciences and theater arts, and no one ever told me it was possible to do anything but rely on someone else for a paycheck.
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Filed by Lance at 12:57 am under General
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The cast of Wild Flowers during the reading

The cast and author of Wild Flowers discussing it with the audience

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Filed by Lance at 4:06 pm under General, Social Issues
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My roommate Rob and I ditched the Grammys to go see The Kings Speech. I loved it.

For hundreds of years, people have been debating stories about those in power versus stories about the working classes. Oedipus, Hamlet, and King George VI versus Everyman, Willie Loman, and Lionel Logue. The Kings Speech was really interesting because it displayed both types of story, and the interaction between the two distinct worlds of have’s and have-not’s.
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Filed by Lance at 6:52 pm under General, Love, The Arts
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It’s amazing, what happens to you doing nothing.

2011 will forever be the year without a January: I fell ill… really ill… on January 4, and returned to life on January 31.

I feel great now, and am back on the job. Last night, I had a really wonderful evening attending the Chicago Independent Artists Network, and work on Launch Pad Casting Workshop is coming along.

So now that it’s Valentine’s Day (bah humbug), Happy New Year, everyone!

Filed by Bil at 3:29 pm under Fightin' Words, Politics
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Over time, I’ve learned to be pragmatic when talking to others about politics. I myself have some incredibly strong opinions, but I know plenty of my good friends & favorite family members have very different opinions, and rather than ruin relationships with petty arguments, I tend to just avoid the subject entirely.

Occasionally, though, I feel the need to blurt something out. This is one of those times.
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Filed by Bil at 9:00 am under Fightin' Words, Stuff to Read, The Media
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Quick point of interest: while reading a post from socialmediaexaminer.com (don’t judge) about social media trends in business (I beg you don’t judge), I somehow found my way to a different article about what’s new this week in social media (for the love of Pete don’t judge). I took the time to watch a video about an iPad-only magazine, because for some reason every video I’ve ever seen on Vimeo has been between moderately and awesomely cool. I don’t know how Vimeo attracts cooler users than YouTube, but it does.

Richard Branson Launches Project, an iPad-Only Magazine: Project is “the first global magazine app for creative people about creative people.” Do you think this is the future of publishing?

PROJECT magazine demo - issue 1 from PROJECT on Vimeo.

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Filed by Bil at 7:07 pm under The Arts
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Just posting a bunch of videos is really lazy blogging. I am aware of this. And I sincerely apologize, but that’s exactly what you’re getting right now.

Somehow, I didn’t know about Xtranormal until just this weekend. I mean, I’d seen a few clever videos that made their way around the internet, but I didn’t realize that you could create an account and make your own. So I did.

I made a series called “SadBots” which is about (you guessed it) emo robots. So put on your thrift-store sweater, put your Morrissey LPs aside, and get ready to relate to emotionless (yet poetic) talking robots.

Filed by Bil at 2:42 pm under Fightin' Words, Stuff to Read, The Media
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Print is not dead. Don’t say print is dead. Not even cassette tapes are dead, so print certainly still has a place in the world.

Print is, however, more specialized than it used to be. There aren’t quite as many books or magazines as there were ten or fifteen years ago, and there are definitely fewer news publications. In my time here in Chicago, I’ve seen at least three highly popular weekly print papers cease paper production altogether.

What this means – among other meanings – is that people who print things are much more discerning about what to print and what not to print. The e-mail revolution is a win for trees, but for writers, it narrows your chances of getting your work into print, and it drastically reduces your odds of getting paid to write.
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Filed by Trevor at 11:36 am under The Arts
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“Robert Frost disliked having poems set to music. Not because he objected to the music - he objected to what it did to the poems. Frost, himself, would have objected. He would have strenuously objected.” — Lesley Francis, Robert Frost’s granddaughter

Two versions of the same piece, one of them illegal. Imagine having to commission a text with the same meter, rhyme scheme, and key words as Robert Frost’s “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening” while at the same time being a coherent, emotionally resonant text befitting the music. Or, I guess I should say, imagine having to write it, especially after the original version had already enjoyed numerous successful performances nationwide. This is what is necessary when one is sued for copyright infringement by the estate of a long-dead, universally respected poet.

The poem becomes public domain in 2038 and Eric Whitacre, the composer, has stated that he would not revert to the original in that instance. Which do you prefer? Why? Is it the subject matter or the actual constants and vowels of the text itself?

Filed by Bil at 4:23 pm under Pop Culture, The Arts, The Science
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Thanks to Laughing Squid for bearing the hard news that famed mathematician and all-around smart guy Benoit Mandelbrot has passed away, and double thanks for the pair of videos posted on that page, which I have re-embedded here, along with a bunch of other fractal videos (for the benefit of everyone out there who’s not on drugs).

The TED talk Mandelbrot gave earlier this year is a little over 17 minutes long, and worth every second of it, so if you’ve got the time, do yourself the favor.
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