Month: June 2020

Leaders of the music industry have pledged to “disconnect” from business to support communities fighting against racial inequality as part of “Black Out Tuesday.” In response to a massive wave of outrage following the death last week in Minneapolis, Minnesota, of George Floyd in police custody, major record labels denounced racial injustice on social media. They are calling for a “day of action” on June 2 to reflect and promote accountability, contemplation and change.  “We stand together with the black community against all forms of racism, bigotry, and violence. Now, more than ever, we must use our voices to speak up and challenge the injustices all around us,” Ron Perry, chairman of Columbia Records, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation America, said Thursday night. Warner Records made a similar announcement, pledging that activity at their labels will not continue to operate as usual, and committing to help Black Lives Matter and other organizations battling injustice.Universal Music, part of Vivendi, said on its Twitter account that they “stand with the black community,” under the hashtag #TheShowMustBePaused. Interscope Geffen A&M, part of the Universal group, said it would release no new music this week.#TheShowMustBePausedpic.twitter.com/Qf15vCbMQU— Universal Production Music US (@UniversalPM_US) June 1, 2020 Universal Music Group CEO Lucian Grainge issued a memo to staff over the weekend outlining plans for a task force to “accelerate our efforts in areas such as inclusion and social justice.” “This week, yet again, we saw our society’s most painful realities about race, justice, and inequality brought — cruelly and brutally — into the harsh light of day,” he wrote in the note, according to Reuters. Protests were ignited by a video showing white police officer Derek Chauvin suffocating Floyd, a black 46-year-old man, by kneeling on his neck for nearly nine minutes shortly before his death May 25.  Chauvin has been fired and is facing third-degree murder charges.  Many influential artists have also spoken out on social media about Floyd’s death. Beyoncé posted a video to Instagram calling for her followers to sign a petition seeking “justice for George Floyd.” “We’re broken, and we’re disgusted. … I am not only speaking to people of color. If you are white, black, brown, or anything in between, I am sure you feel (left) hopeless by the racism going on in America right now,” she said to her fans.  “Watching my people get murdered and lynched day after day pushed me to a heavy place in my heart!” Rihanna wrote on Instagram.Other celebrities, including Ariana Grande, J Cole, Yungblud, Camila Cabello, Shawn Mendes and Nick Cannon joined protests over the weekend. Singer Hasley was among the artists seen protesting in Los Angeles and shared her experience via social media.”We were peaceful, hands up, not moving, not breaching the line,” she tweeted, along with photos of police in protective gear. “They opened fire of rubber bullets and tear gas multiple times on us,” the singer said. fired rubber bullets at us. we did not breach the line. hands were up. unmoving. and they gassed and fired. pic.twitter.com/K8YauF0APn— h (@halsey) May 31, 2020National Guard Troops have been deployed in 15 states and Washington, D.C., as tensions at the protests rose. Reuters contributed to this report
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The jersey-wearing camaraderie. The scent of sizzling sausages. The buzz before a big game.
 
The distinctive atmosphere of live sports, that feeling in the air, will return in time as pandemic restrictions are eased. But will that very air be safe in a closed arena with other fans in attendance?
The billions of dollars spent on state-of-the-art sports facilities over the last quarter-century have made high-efficiency air filtration systems more common, thanks in part to the pursuit of green and healthy building certifications. Upgrades will likely increase in the post-coronavirus era, too.
The problem is that even the cleanest of air can’t keep this particular virus from spreading; if someone coughs or sneezes, those droplets are in the air. That means outdoor ballparks have high contaminant potential, too.  
“Most of the real risk is going to be short-distance transmission, people sitting within two, three or four seats of each other,” said Ryan Demmer, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota’s School of Public Health. “It’s not really about the virus spreading up, getting into the ventilation system and then getting blown out to the entire stadium because this virus doesn’t seem to transmit that way. It doesn’t aerosolize that well.”
The three hours spent in proximity to thousands of others is part of the fan experience. It’s also why major sports leagues have been discussing plans to reopen in empty venues, for now. High-touch areas with the potential to spread the virus — called fomite transmission — are plentiful at the ballgame, of course. Door handles. Stair rails. Restroom fixtures. Concession stands.
Hand washing by now has become a societal norm, but disinfectant arsenals need to be brought up to speed, too.
“I can’t really find good hand sanitizer easily in stores. So think about trying to scale that up, so everybody who comes into U.S. Bank Stadium gets a little bottle of Purel. Things like that can be modestly helpful,” Demmer said.  
There is much work to be done. Vigilant sanitizing of the frequent-touch surfaces will be a must. Ramped-up rapid testing capability during pre-entry screening could become common for fans. Minimizing concourse and entry bottlenecks, and maintaining space between non-familial attendees, could be mandatory. Mask-wearing requirements? Maybe.
Most experts, including those at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, believe the primary mode of transmission for COVID-19 is close person-to-person contact through breathing, coughing or sneezing but there’s no consensus on some of the details.
“There’s still widespread disagreement between experts on which mode of transmission dominates for influenza. So the likelihood of us figuring this out soon for this virus is low,” said Joe Allen, director of the Healthy Buildings Program and an assistant professor at Harvard’s School of Public Health. “We may never figure it out, but I also think it’s irrelevant because it’s a pandemic and we should be guarding against all of them.”
Including, of course, the air.
The American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Engineers designed the Minimum Efficiency Reporting Value (MERV) scale to measure a filtration system’s effectiveness (from 1-16) at capturing microscopic airborne particles that can make people sick. Not just viruses, but dust, pollen, mold and bacteria. Most experts recommend a MERV rating of 13 or higher, the minimum standard for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification.
An emerging technology in this area is called bipolar ionization. Connecticut-based AtmosAir has a bipolar ionization air treatment system in about 40 sports venues. Staples Center in Los Angeles was one of the first major sports customers. TD Garden in Boston and Bridgestone Arena in Nashville are among the others who’ve signed on.
The Minnesota Sports Facilities Authority approved last year a 10-year contract for a little more than $1 million with AtmosAir to install its system in U.S. Bank Stadium, home of the Vikings and the first indoor NFL stadium to use it. The building, which measures 1.8 million square feet, has 53 air handling units with AtmosAir tubes installed, including 30 in the seating bowl.
The ions act like fresh air, reducing the amount of outside air needed to be introduced for the cleansing process. The protein spikes in the coronavirus particles make them easier to catch and kill, said Philip Tierno, a New York University School of Medicine professor of microbiology and pathology.
Said AtmosAir founder and CEO Steve Levine: “We’re never going to create a mountaintop, but we’re going to put in maybe three to four times the ions over the ambient air and then let those ions attack different pollutants in the air. The ions grab onto particles and spores and make them bigger and heavier, so they’re much easier to filter out of the air.”
The next time fans do pass through the turnstiles, in a few weeks or a few months, in most cases they will probably encounter an unprecedented level of cleanliness.  
“There will be some controls that are visible, extra cleaning and disinfection, but some of it will be invisible, like for what’s happening in the air handling system,” said Allen, the Harvard professor.
“The consumers will decide when they feel comfortable going back, and that’s going to depend on what strategies are put in place in these venues and stadiums and arenas and, most importantly, how well these organizations communicate that to the paying public.”
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Christo, known for massive, ephemeral public arts projects died Sunday at his home in New York. He was 84.His death was announced on Twitter and the artist’s web page. No cause of death was given.Along with late wife Jeanne-Claude, the artists’ careers were defined by their ambitious art projects that quickly disappeared soon after they were erected. In 2005, he installed more than 7,500 vinyl gates in New York’s Central Park and wrapped the Reichstag in Berlin in fabric with an aluminum sheen in 1995. Their $26 million Umbrellas project erected 1,340 blue umbrellas installed in Japan and 1,760 blue umbrellas in Southern California in 1991.The statement said the artist’s next project, L’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped, is slated to appear in September in Paris as planned. An exhibition about Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s work is also scheduled to run from July through October at the Centre Georges Pompidou.FILE – In this June 16, 2016, photo, artist Christo Vladimirov Javacheff walks on his monumental installation ‘The Floating Piers’ he created with late Jeanne-Claude during a press preview at the lake Iseo, northern Italy.”Christo lived his life to the fullest, not only dreaming up what seemed impossible but realizing it,” his office said in a statement. “Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s artwork brought people together in shared experiences across the globe, and their work lives on in our hearts and memories.”Born in Bulgaria in 1935, Christo Vladimirov Javacheff studied at the Fine Arts Academy in Sofia before moving to Prague in 1957, then Vienna, then Geneva. It was in Paris in 1958 where he met Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon. They were born on the same day (June 13) in the same year (1935), and, according to him, “In the same moment” and would become partners in life and art.Christo was already wrapping smaller found objects, like cars and furniture. After he met Jeanne-Claude, their scale broadened. Within three years they were working together on an installation of oil drums and tarp on the docks in Cologne.Although their large-scale outdoor and indoor projects were collaborative, they were all credited solely to Christo until 1994, when they revealed Jeanne-Claude’s contributions. The decision, they said, was theirs and deliberate since it was difficult enough for even one artist to make a name for himself.The pair moved to New York in 1964, where they liked to say that they were illegal aliens in an illegal building in SoHo for a few years. They eventually bought that building and would call the city home for the rest of their lives.Jeanne-Claude died in 2009 at age 74 from complications of a brain aneurysm. After her death, Christo said she was argumentative and very critical and always asking questions and he missed all of that very much.In a 2018 interview with The Art Newspaper, Christo spoke about his signature wrapping aesthetic. In the instance of the Reichstag, he said, covering it with fabric made the Victorian sculptures, ornament and decoration disappear and “highlight the principal proportion of architecture.””But, like classical sculpture, all our wrapped projects are not solid buildings; they are moving with the wind, they are breathing,” he said. “The fabric is very sensual and inviting; it’s like a skin.”The two made a point of paying for all of their works on their own and did not accept scholarship or donations.”I like to be absolutely free, to be totally irrational with no justification for what I like to do,” he said. “I will not give up one centimeter of my freedom for anything.” 
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