Tag: art

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Simply dazzling: Peru’s Prince of provocateurs

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Essayist and novelist, Mario Vargas Llosa, Polemicist and politician (a Spanish citizen from 1993),  born in the Peruvian city of Arequipa in 1936, the Nobel Prize-winning literary colossus and debonair provocateur whose contradictory life is considered to be perhaps the greatest contemporary writer and most influential intellectual in the Spanish-speaking world. He was also indisputably the most controversial: He was never out of the headlines in more than six decades of literary and political activity, from the moment he exploded onto the cultural scene in the early 1960s with his first novel, The Time of the Hero, until his last, I … Continue reading Simply dazzling: Peru’s Prince of provocateurs

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Mimetic anonymity voice control

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Trained as a Soprano for music theatre in the 1990s, at a stage school in New York, she learnt to control her voice into mimetic anonymity to fit the female characters of Walt Disney films and Broadway musicals. Mastering the problem of her vocal break the passaggio  the yodel-ish sound  that happens to everyone when their voice moves register, from chest to head was critical for stamping out individuality in her voice. In Vocal Break, Lauren Elkin seamlessly blends memoir, feminist manifesto and cultural history to explore a plurality of female singing voice- and how women have used them to defy convention, … Continue reading Mimetic anonymity voice control

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Extending the algorithmic control of Amazon warehouses into every corner of our lives

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Henry Snow, US Labour and economic historian, reminds us that he idea of a building designed round a central inspection tower “was a workplace before it was a prison”, the brainchild of the philosopher’s mechanically minded younger brother Samuel, who fascinated by shipbuilding, undertook a high-level apprenticeship in the late 18th century that equipped him with “both a trademan’s knowledge and bourgeois European science”. Whether on Caribbean plantations in the seventeenth century or in Amazon Warehouses today, the powerful have constantly developed new techniques to control workers- and new justifications for doing so. Ideas of control perfected on the factory floor … Continue reading Extending the algorithmic control of Amazon warehouses into every corner of our lives

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How water instilled a dream city

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Back in Nineteen Thirteen, William Mulholland completed the Los Angeles Aqueduct, a 233-mile engineering masterwork transporting water from the Owens Valley, a dry lake on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada across the desert to a barren south-western corner of California that would become the home of filmmaking, and transformed the land’s fertility. In Aqua, award winning, Italian filmmaker and writer Chiara Barzini gives insight into the founding of Hollywood, the building of great water systems. Her hometown Rome, abound with empty aqueducts and pipes, representing someone’s dream of turning dry soil into a fertile lucrative and fertile agricultural … Continue reading How water instilled a dream city

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HOSPITALITY – the act of being friendly and welcoming to visitors

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Whether you are a business person or someone browsing to  learn about and garner new technology or takes on making hotel stays as more and more of an exciting and comforting experience, The Independent Hotel Show at London, Olympia is a great event.  After the show’s two day show, staged close to buzzing Kensington High Street,  London, I have gathered information which should be of interest to our readers  with contact details if you wish to research my findings for your own enjoyment and information. Winning Moves – winningmoves.co.uk selling Monopoly and card games.  Monopoly is available in a variety of genres including a Ritz Hotel version. … Continue reading HOSPITALITY – the act of being friendly and welcoming to visitors

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Obstacles and indignities that Thatcher encountered

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Charles Moore’s authorized biography of Margaret Thatcher illuminates her early life, rise to power and initial period as prime minister of the woman who transformed Britain and the world in the late twentieth century.  Moore takes us back to Grantham where she lived over her parent grocery shop. As there was no hereditary money, she had to work very hard, even serving at the counter. She knew about perseverance and in attempting to become an MP she lost in two general elections, but did not give up until she secured a safe seat in Finchley. She became the Conservative Party … Continue reading Obstacles and indignities that Thatcher encountered

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Vanishing skills and traditions

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Craft Land Britain was once a craft land and for generations what we made with our hands shaped our identities, built our communities and defined our regions. Historian and fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, James Fox travels the length of Britain to seek out the country’s last great craftspeople in Craftland and chronicles the vanishing skills and traditions that used to govern every aspect of life on these shores. Stepping inside the workshops of blacksmiths and wheelwrights, cutlers and Coopers, thatchers, bellfounders and watchmakers, we glimpse not only our past but another way of life, one that is not yet … Continue reading Vanishing skills and traditions

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Photography celebrates its bicentenary in 2026

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Flashes of Brilliance is the story of the wildest experiments in early photography and the wild people who undertook them. Spare a thought when you take photos from an airplane window, or using a camera underwater, watch a movie or view an X-Ray. These inventions made such things possible were experimental revelatory, and sometimes dangerous- and many of the innovators, entrepreneurs, and inventors behind them were memorable eccentrics. Did you know, the earliest photographers didn’t just take snaps in the studio, or did dull sepia plats of formal gardens, or took staged portraits, but they were detectives, baloonists, deep-sea divers.  … Continue reading Photography celebrates its bicentenary in 2026

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World of British Aristocracy

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Despite a decline since 1945, we view the Aristocrats or upper class as synonymous with glamour, adventure and whose status and fortunes inspired instinctive respect, you have look at the newspaper headlines about dukes and lords, continued interest in Lord Lucan’s 1974 disappearance.  The Duke of Westminster, whose wealth dates back to the 17th century, is worth £10bn, and according to Doughty some peers still live largely “Edwardian lives”. Heirs & Graces presents evidence that we would be better off if at least some stately homes were torn down, if hereditary peers were removed from the House of Lords, and if the … Continue reading World of British Aristocracy

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Sholay fifty years on under starlight: comedy to heartbreak, action to tragedy

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“Sholay” the Indian blockbuster celebrates its 50 years, whose journey began from an uncertain beginning to a monumental success, is a powerful reminder that once a spark ignites they can turn into an inferno that can’t be doused. This is the story of the team who smelled failure in the first week of releasing the film turned around by marketing in to the evergreen blockbuster. Sholay with stars like Amitabh Bachchan, Dharmendra, Hema Malini, Sanjeev Kumar, Jaya Baduri and Amjad Khan. Sholay inspired by Spaghetti Westerns and Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, the film had a flavour of its own, with … Continue reading Sholay fifty years on under starlight: comedy to heartbreak, action to tragedy