#shared culture

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Through a common culture, a person is joined to something greater than himself, and the world as he perceives it (his Lebenswelt) is transformed accordingly.

Sir Roger Scruton, Aesthetic Experience and Culture

'Singing On The River' on the banks of King's College, Cambridge, with The King's Men - a very traditional Cambridge thing to do to end the Easter term after May Week.

[theivorybilledwoodpecker]

"...So, on the Discworld, people take things seriously.

"Like stories.

"Because stories are important.

"People think that stories are shaped by people. In fact, it’s the other way around.

"Stories exist independently of their players. If you know that, the knowledge is power.

"Stories, great flapping ribbons of shaped space-time, have been blowing and uncoiling around the universe since the beginning of time. And they have evolved. The weakest have died and the strongest have survived and they have grown fat on the retelling…stories, twisting and blowing through the darkness.

"And their very existence overlays a faint but insistent pattern on the chaos that is history. Stories etch grooves deep enough for people to follow in the same way that water follows certain paths down a mountainside. And every time fresh actors tread the path of the story, the groove runs deeper.

"This is called the theory of narrative causality and it means that a story, once started, takes a shape. It picks up all the vibrations of all the other workings of that story that have ever been.

"This is why history keeps on repeating all the time.

"So a thousand heroes have stolen fire from the gods. A thousand wolves have eaten grandmother, a thousand princesses have been kissed. A million unknowing actors have moved, unknowing, through the pathways of story.

"It is now impossible for the third and youngest son of any king, if he should embark on a quest which has so far claimed his older brothers, not to succeed.

"Stories don’t care who takes part in them. All that matters is that the story gets told, that the story repeats. Or, if you prefer to think of it like this: stories are a parasitical life form, warping lives in the service only of the story itself.*

" It takes a special kind of person to fight back, and become the bicarbonate of history."

-- Witches Abroad, by Terry Pratchett

[internutter]

[Title: Bohemian Rhapsody: A Space Opera] [what happens when the night-owl Humans take over the interstellar comms] --… by internutter

Dead air. Silence. These things are anathema to the human mind. To them, there is such a thing as too quiet. Lock a Human in an anechoic chamber and they will go mad... And this was why the Party Line was invented. To keep Humans from going insane in the silence of the too-quiet hours.

It took thirty seconds for it to become a writhing pit of memetic perpetuation.

"Is this thing on?" said a voice in the darkness. "Can anyone hear me?"

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[barbex]

There’s a post going around with a warning to creators, to not post their ideas on social media for they might get stolen.

I’m not good enough with words to articulate on that post but I don’t like this advice. 

The beauty of this age is our shared culture. How someone from India, someone from Australia, another person from Sweden and one from Brasil can all develop ideas together here. Just think about the “humans, the weird aliens”, “Earth is SpaceAustralia”, “humans are cute spaceorcs” posts that keep growing and developing. Great stories unfolding in front of our eyes, grown out of collaboration. 

Are you trying to tell me, nobody can write those stories in a novel now? That the idea of humans as cute spaceorcs is now “stolen” and can not be used anymore? You won’t post your cool vampire idea because someone else might write a story based on it? Do you know how many alien or vampire stories there are? Any idea can spawn a multitude of novel ideas.

Just because the idea is out there doesn’t mean it is now untouchable.

I think sharing ideas is the best thing that comes from social media.

[capricorn-0mnikorn]

it's ok to delete the 1st part. i'm sorry for unnecessarily unloading. helpful feedback: theoretically a starting point for smaller theatres might be incorporating recording into media night (photographer(s) get promo stills). i'd prefer someone who knew the show + knew where to put the camera or you get missing bits from wonky sight angles, those too close to the booth Will pick up on the SM giving cues, someone not capturing enough of the stage, etc (/2)

(This is in response to this post I made, about the complicated ethics of bootleg recordings of theater)

Oh, yeah.

Really, those are all good suggestions. Also (as I understand it), all theater shows are recorded for archival purposes & preserving history, and then, stored away in libraries, with tight restrictions on access (Like: you can watch it if you’re a history scholar, but you can only watch it one time, and you can never take it out of the library, and you have to watch it alone, etc.). One thing that could be done is to ease up those restrictions on the archival recordings, and make those available for more people -- if they don’t want to put them up for sale to the general public, they could make them available to educators, for high school and college English and Drama departments.

The tension and balancing act is between respecting the rights of the creators and the integrity of their work, and actually letting more than a select few (read: the 0.01%) actually see -- at least some version -- of that work, which is why it was created in the first place.

Every cultural experience is different based on the means through which we view it.  Going to a live sporting event and watching a game from the stands is different from watching a television broadcast, is different from listening to a radio broadcast, is different from watching a fictional movie about a sport. Just to give one example.

Professional telecasts of stage shows (such as the one that Nickelodeon recently did with “SpongeBob SquarePants: The Musical (Live on Stage!),” which is what got me thinking about this in the first place), are also very different from actually sitting in the theater and watching it live. We got to see close-ups of the actors’ faces at key moments, as well as cuts to different details of the action on stage -- much of which would have been out of view for someone only able to view the performance from single seat.  However, it’s still a more accurate recording of the actual craft and skill of acting live on stage, than a cinematic recreation of a stage musical.* The pacing of the filmed stage performance still has to account for the actors pausing to catch their breath after a vigorous dance number, or the time it takes to cross a stage, which is completely missing in cinema, with cuts and scene changes and stunt doubles.

And it’s those reminders of the physicality -- and vulnerability -- which is part of the acting profession. that’s a vital aspect of theater as a cultural entity. Its one of the ways that art created for live theater can promote empathy and compassion as a whole.

But very few theatrical productions have the financial backing and clout of the Viacom corporation behind them in order to produce a highly polished recording of a stage performance. But it doesn’t have to be all or nothing.  Even a “bad” cell phone recording can preserve the feel of a performance. (And the objections you raise, above, are one of the reasons I suggested cameras being handed out by the theater on the basis of a lottery -- that way they can ensure that no one is recording too close to the booth to pick up cues. And if the people given cameras at the start of the performance have to hand them all back when they leave, than clips from different cameras can be edited together to give the best complete version (The incentive being that if people return the cameras, they get a code to download the final version for free, as well as being named in the credits).  Yes, this would be extra work and expense for the production, but it would be a lot less expensive and a logistical nightmare than trying to book a whole separate theater just for the filmed production (Which is what they did for SpongeBob). ...Especially if we eliminate the expense of landlords, and the demands of speculative shareholders, in the production.

*(such as “My Fair Lady,” “The Sound of Music,” or “Kiss me Kate” -- great as those are -- We won’t talk about “Cats (2019),” though the 1998 filmed stage version is an interesting object of )

[lazer-horse]

Human Universals: The Things We All Share • Lazer Horse

At a time when division seems more common than conciliation, thinking about the traits shared globally by all humans seems rather timely; and important. Here, we list some so-called human universals.

[a-c-e-t-y-l-e-n-e]

Stopped at a food truck for some food. Fantastic Indian food. Talked to the owner, who has not just this W124, but also 9 other Mercedes ranging from the late 80s to brand new. We talked for a few minutes, and despite our accents being confusing, we had a good conversation. Cars are good, they bring people together. And he gave me a free Sprite.