Arts & Culture

The seas have risen and covered the earth. A few soaked survivors cling to mountaintops and tall buildings. So begin The Adventures of Alvin Sputnik: Deep Sea Explorer, an inventive, heartwarming and visually spectacular tale by Australia’s Tim Watts. On Oct. 5, this acclaimed one-man-show, part environmental parable, part Orpheus and Eurydice, will launch Edison’s ovations for young people series.

The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts and the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts have selected the collaborative firm Freecell Architecture as winner of PXSTL. The $50,000 urban design competition winner will create a temporary space for outdoor performances in Grand Center beginning in spring 2014.

Growing up in Rio de Janeiro, Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959) was drawn to the itinerant musicians known as chorões, whose improvised concerts filled the streets and cafes. On Sept. 16, the Danforth University Center will launch its fall Chamber Music Series with Villa-Lobos’ Choros No. 2, as well as works by Emmanuel, Debussy, Schmitt and Saint-Saëns.

“I have a candidate for the author of the most interesting contemporary English sentences,” wrote Dan Chiasson in The New Yorker last spring. The candidate? “The American poet Carl Phillips.” On Thursday, Sept. 5, Phillips, professor of English and African-American Studies in Arts & Sciences, will launch the Writing Program’s fall Reading Series.

Pop culture is obsessed with youth. Or rather, given the true ages of many of the stars involved, one might say that pop culture is obsessed with the appearance of “youth.” In Precocious Charm: Stars Performing Girlhood in Classical Hollywood Cinema, Gaylyn Studlar, director of Film & Media Studies in Arts & Sciences, examines the work of six stars who helped to define American ideas about girls and girlhood.

There is programming capacity, and then there are the ways people actually process information. As anyone still convalescing from a software update might tell you, these are not necessarily the same things. We sat down with Heather Corcoran to discuss the emerging field of “interaction design,” which emphasizes the importance of the user experience.

The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis will institute new public hours beginning Aug. 21, 2013.

As co-founder of the UNICEF Innovation Unit, Erica Kochi — one of Time magazine’s 100 “World’s Most Influential People” — leverages design and technology to solve some of the world’s most intractable problems. On Thursday, Aug. 29, Kochi will launch the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts fall Public Lecture Series with a free talk in Steinberg Hall.

Bee populations are declining worldwide. But recently, students in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts worked with PAUSE, a multinational group of scientists, gardeners and beekeepers, to design pollinator-friendly sculpture in St. Louis’ Florissant Community Garden.

The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts and the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University invite the St. Louis public to meet three finalists in PXSTL — a collaborative design-build competition that will transform a vacant lot in the heart of Grand Center — on Tuesday, July 30. Shown is “Lighthearted,” an installation by Freecell Architecture, one of the finalists.