Worth A Look

Here are a few posts from last week's Greenpage that might be worth your time...

‘Midnight Rider’ Filmmakers Cite New Evidence to Bolster Case

Variety: “Midnight Rider” director Randall Miller and producer Jody Savin’s Film Allman are pointing to a newly discovered email to show that they were not expressly denied permission to shoot on a CSX trestle on Feb. 20, 2014, when a train plowed through their shooting location and killed a camera assistant, Sarah Jones, and injured eight others.

Posted by David at 10/20/2016 04:32:00 PM

Hollywood Takes on Fan Fiction

Reason.com In 1974 a carpet layer from Michigan spent $2,000 to build a replica of the Starship Enterprise bridge and made Paragon's Paragon, one of the first serious Star Trek fan movies. In 1985, a fan convinced George Takei, who played Sulu on the original series, to reprise the role in Yorktown: A Time to Heal. In subsequent years, putting original cast members in fan productions became increasingly common, with Walter Koenig (Chekov) and Nichelle Nichols (Uhura) starring in the feature-length Star Trek: Of Gods and Men in 2007. For decades these efforts were largely welcome.

Posted by David at 10/21/2016 10:48:00 AM

Computers Are Learning To Write Songs By Listening To All Of Them

Fast Company | Business + Innovation: In May, Google research scientist Douglas Eck left his Silicon Valley office to spend a few days at Moogfest, a gathering for music, art, and technology enthusiasts deep in North Carolina's Smoky Mountains. Eck told the festival's music-savvy attendees about his team’s new ideas about how to teach computers to help musicians write music—generate harmonies, create transitions in a song, and elaborate on a recurring theme. Someday, the machine could learn to write a song all on its own.

Posted by David at 10/18/2016 12:37:00 PM

'Trump-Emboldened,' 'Racist' Crowds Feed An Exodus At The Second City In Chicago

Chicagoist: At least four performers and three members of management have exited famed improv institution The Second City within the last several day—in part due to racist remarks made by audiences who feel bolstered by Donald Trump’s rhetoric, some involved parties said.

Former ETC player Peter Kim, 33, confirmed his departure with WBBM on Thursday.

“I really think [Trump] gave people carte blanche to act and behave hateful,” he told CBS Chicago.

Posted by David at 10/17/2016 10:08:00 AM

Podcast: Technology’s Role in Inclusivity and Accessibility In The Arts

AMT Lab @ CMU: Art is for everyone. At least, it should be. Across the country, arts organizations are thinking more and more about what they can be doing to make sure their art and spaces are accessible for all types of people, including the physically and mentally disabled. Many of them are employing technology in order to do so. The use of audio guides, sensory friendly performances and beacons are increasingly becoming the norm in the arts. There are a select few arts institutions leading the way towards inclusivity, many of them led at some point by Danielle Linzer.

Posted by David at 10/17/2016 10:06:00 AM

Worth A Look

Here are a few posts from last week's* Greenpage that might be worth your time...

How Chicago became world premiere capital

Crain's Chicago Business: Between now and Christmas, Chicago will host more than 30 world premiere plays. From major multimillion-dollar powerhouses to the postage-stamp off-off-off-Loop stages, the city is basically one big theatrical petri dish.

This year is an especially robust one, but every year hundreds of artists take to Chicago's stages in hopes of launching the next “Spamalot” or “August: Osage County.” The million-dollar question: What makes Chicago a magnet for unknown plays? The short answer is that money goes further here, audiences are more welcoming, critics are less powerful and the talent bench is deep.

Posted by David at 10/14/2016 02:29:00 PM

To bring film and TV back to Philly, crew workers want own union local

www.philly.com: As film and television projects have disappeared from the Philadelphia region this year, area crew workers are largely blaming the self-interests of a New York union and want to start a Southeastern Pennsylvania branch to revive the industry here.

The newly formed Coalition of Philly Crew is made up of about 50 nonunion technical workers who say they have been denied membership in the Queens-based local of a powerful union that supplies labor for motion picture and TV productions.

Posted by David at 10/13/2016 05:10:00 PM

Event Safety Alliance | Event Safety For All Initiative

LDI 2016 | Business & People News content from Live Design: From the earliest days of the organization, these four words have guided the actions of the Event Safety Alliance (ESA). Whether it’s the development of guidelines, training opportunities, or advocacy, ESA is committed to ensuring the outcomes are relevant and accessible to everyone within the live event industry. In this spirit, the Event Safety Alliance has launched the Event Safety For All initiative, a broad series of changes to core programs designed to make active participation in the Event Safety Alliance accessible to everyone.

Posted by David at 10/13/2016 02:53:00 PM

US Navy Adopts ESTA Standards

Lighting&Sound America Online - News: The June 2016 edition of NAVFAC P-307, a publication of the Naval Facilities Engineering Command Navy Crane Center Weight Handling Program Management, has a new section 13 entitled "Entertainment Hoists." The section calls out hoists systems identified in their equipment history files as being "entertainment hoists" and conforming to the design and manufacturing requirements in ANSI E1.6 as being different from hoists and cranes used for material handling and construction, and therefore being subject to different rules for their use and maintenance. Those rules include being maintained and operated in accordance with the ANSI E1.6 standards and the OEM recommendations.

Posted by David at 10/12/2016 06:51:00 PM

Lez Brotherston: admin jobs have taken toll on technical theatre

www.thestage.co.uk: Designer Lez Brotherston has criticised theatres for neglecting the importance of design and technical teams, claiming the "core backbone of producing theatre is disappearing".

Brotherston said that while full-time technical posts in theatres have reduced, the number of staff in administration and management roles was increasing.

Posted by David at 10/12/2016 06:31:00 PM  

*I appear to have fallen a little behind. 

Worth A Look

Here are a few posts from last week's Greenpage that might be worth your time...

The Case for Hiring Asian American Directors

HowlRound: I recently reread August Wilson's 1990 essay “I Want A Black Director!” and found myself compelled by his argument: “I declined a white director not on the basis of race but on the basis of culture. White directors are not qualified for the job. The job requires someone who shares the specifics of the culture of black Americans.” As an Asian American director who longs to direct more Asian American plays, I've found myself wishing someone within my community would make a similar argument. I recently realized: I guess that person has to be me.

Posted by David at 10/03/2016 01:43:00 PM

NEA Warns Against Scam Artists

Stage Directions: The NEA is warning theatre companies of a scam that attempts to defraud them (and other arts orgs) through false grant notifications via Facebook. The perpetrators claim to be NEA employees who need seed money from an account to release grant funds. This is a scam. The NEA never notifies individuals or organizations about grants through Facebook; nor do they request money before releasing grant funds.

Posted by David at 10/05/2016 05:38:00 PM

Arduino on Arduino battle ends in reconciliation, merger

Ars Technica: On Saturday, the two rival groups—Arduino LLC (Arduino.cc) and Arduino Srl (Arduino.org)—announced that they had "settled their differences," and agreed to merge. At present, the similarly-designed sites both carry the official Arduino logo, and both sell official Arduino products.

Posted by David at 10/04/2016 02:42:00 PM

Relaxed Performances: The Nuts and Bolts of Offering Sensory-Friendly Experiences to Your Audience

Breaking Character: The work of making the theatre field more inclusive and equitable for people with disabilities is a complex and long-term project. Like any kind of equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) work, it can feel simultaneously like the most important priority for sustainability of an organization and like an issue so large that it can be daunting to take the first step.

Posted by David at 10/05/2016 05:37:00 PM

Inside The World's Largest Pattern Library

Co.Design | business + design: Where do patterns come from? While some might be computer-generated using the latest in image scanning and digital printing technologies, many more can be sourced to the Design Library—the world's largest collection of patterns.

Posted by David at 10/03/2016 01:47:00 PM

Worth a Look

Here are a few posts from last week's Greenpage that might be worth your time...

Cultural venues ask patrons to keep eyes on the show, security

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: If you notice something suspicious at a play, musical or concert Downtown, the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust wants you to alert an usher or call 911.

The trust announced Monday that it has partnered with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s nationwide awareness program “If You See Something, Say Something.”

Posted by David at 9/27/2016 02:21:00 PM

California Censors IMDB Because of Hollywood’s Alleged Ageism

Hit & Run : Reason.com: California Gov. Jerry Brown has only a couple of days left to decide whether he's going to sign or veto an important reform bill that would seriously reduce the ability of local law enforcement agencies to abuse the asset forfeiture process to seize and keep millions of dollars from citizens without having to prove they've committed a crime.

Posted by David at 9/28/2016 01:07:00 PM

The Healthy Maker: Tackling Vapors, Fumes And Heavy Metals

Hackaday: Fearless makers are conquering ever more fields of engineering and science, finding out that curiosity and common sense is all it takes to tackle any DIY project. Great things can be accomplished, and nothing is rocket science. Except for rocket science of course, and we’re not afraid of that either. Soldering, welding, 3D printing, and the fine art of laminating composites are skills that cannot be unlearned once mastered. Unfortunately, neither can the long-term damage caused by fumes, toxic gasses and heavy metals.

Posted by David at 9/27/2016 02:28:00 PM

Making Sense of Cultural Equity

Createquity.: About us. By us. For us. Near us. It has been almost a century since the great W.E.B. Du Bois–one of the co-founders of the NAACP–offered this stirring call for what, today, we would call “cultural equity.” To say much has happened in those ninety years would be to oversimplify. Significant progress has been made. And yet for many, and on many levels, it is not enough. In a speech given just last year, Jeff Chang, executive director of Stanford’s Institute for Diversity in the Arts, exclaimed: “at a moment when…our images depict us as one happy rainbow nation, and yet the structures of power, including the national culture complex…is still overwhelmingly white, we begin to recognize that we have not yet achieved cultural equity.”

Posted by David at 9/26/2016 01:47:00 PM

2016 Pro Tool Innovation Awards: The Winners

protoolinnovationawards.com: Each year, Pro Tool Reviews reviewers and judges put their hands on hundreds of tools between reviews, shootouts, trade shows, and media events. 2016 has been a HUGE year for innovation with improvements to existing tools and the introduction of products we never would have dreamed of ten years ago. Choosing the winners for the 2016 Pro Tool Innovation Awards was more difficult this year than it ever has been thanks to some incredible innovation and competition within some game-changing categories.

Posted by David at 9/28/2016 01:10:00 PM