Cognitivism, which has permeated society—as evidenced by the omnipresence of the terms “cognitive” and “cognition”—has perpetuated a traditional view of thought and intelligence as phenomena of inextricable complexity, and therefore phenomena that we can hardly imagine recreating artificially. - AI & Society

By now we’ve moved beyond a post-literature culture into what some are calling a post-literate age, taking us back several thousand years to communication by images and symbols. - The Atlantic

AI measurement is a new field, and everything is still under contention—not just how we test but what we should be testing for. - The Point

Common knowledge — awareness of mutual understanding — can explain the emergence of social-media shaming mobs, academic cancel culture and revolutions that seem to erupt from nowhere. - Nature

Their whole lives, they had heard people talk about picturing, and imagining, and counting sheep, and visualizing beaches, and seeing in the mind’s eye, and assumed that all those idioms were only metaphors or colorful hyperbole. - The New Yorker

Archetypes belong to everyone: that’s why art galleries and libraries and arts councils receive public funding; that’s why Top 40 radio plays a Friday-morning megamix. As is typical in my line of work, I don’t consider the stories I’ve written my property; a story isn’t finished until the reader completes it. - The Walrus

According to SCAD, the Applied AI program will prepare students for professions including AI product developer, AI design strategist, AI story engineer, autonomous agent designer, and “ethical design strategist.” SCAD is also offering a minor in Applied AI that’s open to students across all majors. - Fast Company

“Nearly nine months after Trump became chair of the center and more than a month into its main season, ticket sales for the Kennedy Center’s three largest performance venues are the worst they’ve been in years. … Tens of thousands of seats have been left empty.” - The Washington Post (Yahoo!)

Arts Council England’s online portal, Grantium, was used by artists to submit and manage funding applications. It crashed in July, leaving thousands of applications in limbo until the portal reopened in late September. Yet, say applicants, ACE refused to extend deadlines and has distributed less money than grantees were promised. - The Guardian

In issuing his ruling, Judge Stein compared George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones to summaries of the book created by ChatGPT. The judge wrote that a “discerning observer could easily conclude that this detailed summary is substantially similar to Martin’s original work. - Publishers Weekly

The administration’s newest emergency appeal to the high court was filed a month and a half after a federal appeals court in Washington held that the official, Shira Perlmutter, could not be unilaterally fired. - APNews

Several major curriculum publishers have withdrawn products from the market, while others have found that teachers are shying away from lessons that were once uncontroversial, on topics as basic as constitutional limits on executive power. - The New York Times

In an increasingly authoritarian age, we are suspicious of new leaders; when posterity squints back at us it will have to fumble in the dark to identify 21st-century composers who might, by some future criteria, qualify for greatness. - The Critic

“Physicians will get prescriptions that they will give to patients. ... And we will give each patient that calls us two tickets for free,” said the orchestra’s CEO. Though Montreal’s concert-prescription program is still new, many doctors elsewhere in Canada have already expressed interest, as have orchestras in Toronto and Quebec City.  - CBC

Paul Winberg is credited with tripling the festival’s annual contributions, bolstering its administrative infrastructure and overseeing a key change in artistic leadership last year. Under his watch, the festival has become one of the country’s foremost free classical music series. - WBEZ

The power of music has long been its ability to soundtrack a generation—to evoke emotion, as well as summon a specific time and place. Headphone listening not only isolates the listener; it shrinks music’s cultural footprint. - The Atlantic

“At the Hot Club of New York, ... jazz from the 1910s through the ’50s crackles to life, spun on 78 RPM discs made of shellac (and heard) through a restored vintage hi-fi system … (in a room) where shelves sag under thousands of 78s, books and magazines.” - The New York Times

A private collector brought a page from a mid-9th-century liturgical book to document dealer Nathan Raab, who, after research, identified some previously overlooked markings over the word “Alleluia” as notating the rising and falling pitches of a melody. - The Guardian

Conceptualised by Calatrava as a "monumental bridge", its volume traverses a series of 350-metre-long platforms and bus stops that extend outwards from the gallery's underside. - Dezeen

Gaëtane Verna inherited a Wexner facing financial turmoil worsened by the Covid-19 pandemic. The center’s fiscal health and workplace culture appeared to deteriorate further after her arrival. - ARTnews

The museum will henceforth be presenting exhibitions in new spaces each cycle. The intent behind this is both to pair artistic projects with architecturally or historically significant sites and to bring attention to lesser known spaces that can inspire more site-specific art. - San Francisco Chronicle (MSN)

The $1 billion, 5 million square-foot complex. for which planning first began in 1992, includes 12 main galleries holding over 50,000 items, a conference center, a children’s museum, and a large conservation center. Among much else, the GEM will bring the entire contents of King Tutankhamun’s tomb together for the first time. - The...

Fifty-four percent of museum employees have considered quitting their jobs in the last five years, and more than one-quarter of full-time workers earn salaries that fall below a living wage, according to a new survey. - The New York Times

Last November, thieves used axes to break into the Musée Cognacq-Jay and steal seven antique snuffboxes, all highly bejeweled and all on loan from major institutions: the Louvre, the V&A, and Britain’s Royal Collection. Five of the snuffboxes have been recovered following what appears to have been a ransom payment. - Artnet

For most of human history, culture was exclusively oral. Knowledge was transmitted by speech, and what could be transmitted was what could be remembered. Oral culture was “aggregative rather than analytic”—full of redundancy, traditionalist in disposition, and embedded in the “human lifeworld,” rather than allowing abstract thought. - The Baffler

If we consider literacy not as the ability to parse simple sentences but as the capacity to comprehend and enjoy complex texts, and ultimately as a sensibility that approaches the world itself as a text that requires interpretation, it’s obvious we live in an unprecedented decline of what neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf calls “deep literacy.”...

Boomers, X-ers, and most Millennials will just see it as a pair of numbers. Gen Z-ers may recognize it as what their younger relatives have started yelling constantly. Yet the key thing about “6-7”, especially for lexicographers, is that it's unclear what exactly the word (if that’s the right term) even means. - CBS...

At an “unlikely creative hub” in New York’s financial district, there’s an old electric typewriter which has been attached to a chatbot trained on Baldwin’s writings.  You insert a sheet of paper, type a question — asking for personal “guidance,” not about Baldwin himself — and he/it will answer. - The New York Times

If the reading revolution represented the greatest transfer of knowledge to ordinary men and women in history, the screen revolution represents the greatest theft of knowledge from ordinary people in history. - The Free Press

Q: Why do you think people still talk to you? IC: Most people don’t read bylines, and the vast majority of people I interview have no idea who I am. - Columbia Journalism Review

Like other creative types, a lot of podcasters are skeptical of or even downright hostile to the idea of using AI bots, which only mimic sentience and thought, to create content. Yet some AI tools can do legitimate, important work on podcasts. - The New York Times

With APT having lost well over $2 million in support from the now-defunded Corporation for Public Broadcasting, some board members see PBS dues as a major expense to be cut (something which would also appeal to conservative officeholders controlling purse strings). Yet PBS programming is 90% of APT’s schedule. - Alabama Reflector

“Last week, NBC News gutted all the reporting groups aimed at the stories of underrepresented groups. And they're hardly alone. … As more media companies roll back diversity efforts, … the avenues for reporters who specialize in such coverage grow increasingly limited, putting those journalists on the front lines of layoffs.” - TheWrap (MSN)

“Paramount on Wednesday began … the first wave of a deep staff reduction planned since David Ellison took the helm of the entertainment company in August” following a merger with Ellison’s company, Skydance. “Wednesday's cuts represent about 5% of the organization.” - Los Angeles Times (Yahoo!)

A cult film is born through ritualistic traditions of audience attendance that must occur in a public, social screening setting like a movie theatre. The Rocky Horror Picture Show — the Hollywood-funded screen adaptation of Jim Sharman and Richard O’Brien’s successful British stage musical — owes its cult success to independent, repertory cinemas. - The Conversation

“The producers of The Lost King on Monday agreed to pay damages to an academic who sued for libel over his on-screen depiction. Richard Taylor said he suffered ‘enormous distress and embarrassment’ because of the 2022 film, which centers on amateur historian Philippa Langley’s quest to find the king’s remains.” - AP

“Everything you see on the stage starts with Eyal herself improvising, which is then mapped on to the dancers. ... Each movement idea could be slowed down, reversed or repeated. ... From a small amount of source material, Eyal will play with composition and timing and layering up movement.” - The Guardian

“The team performs for hundreds of thousands of fans each year, appearing frequently at sporting events, community centers, festivals and conferences across the Northeast. … The Pacemakers boast 47 members and have won fans around the globe with viral performances that have racked up millions of views online.” - New York Post

“Dance is already abstract, and so the role of us as artists is to be as specific as possible with what we want to say. That’s how we make dance speak. We are talking heart-to-heart, spirit-to-spirit, with the audience.” - The Minnesota Star Tribune

“Kureishi, 70, who wrote the award-winning novel The Buddha of Suburbia and the film My Beautiful Laundrette, has devised a filmed piece about the devastating aftermath of his fall for two leading ballet dancers, in collaboration with choreographer and Royal Ballet principal character artist Kristen McNally.” - The Observer (UK)

Wayne McGregor worked with a Google Arts & Culture Lab team to develop a choreographic language agent called AISOMA — a tool that can create and reiterate phrases and movements from a huge repository of dance data. He's also created a pas de deux which audience members watch inside a circular 12K LED screen....

In an attempt to cater to evolving tastes, bring in as many attendees as possible and expose the next generation to ballet, Pittsburgh Ballet has been programming productions that tap into popular stories to help sell tickets. - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Eight years ago at the Marin Theatre near San Francisco, Thomas Bradshaw’s play Thomas and Sally sparked in-person protests, an open letter with 1,800 signatures, and a police confrontation. Now, under new leaders, the company hopes to repair some of the damage with Suzan-Lori Parks’s play Sally & Tom. - San Francisco Chronicle (Yahoo!)

The company was producing Michael Frayn’s backstage farce Noises Off, which is, as DTC’s executive director wrote to subscribers, “an intensely physical comedy that depends on precise timing and movement, (so) even one missing performer made it impossible to safely continue.” And the cast had a whack-a-mole series of health issues. - KERA (Dallas)

Artistry is what the ’40s biopics get most wrong. Not just the facts, though the depictions of composition, collaboration and show-making are boldly inaccurate. “Rhapsody in Blue” makes a fuss about Gershwin’s use of a diminished-ninth chord in “Swanee,” a chord that appears nowhere in it. - The New York Times

“I think the understudies, the swings, the standbys and the alternates do so much work, with so little recognition, so much of the time — this is a little piece of paper that makes sure they’re acknowledged by the people who are watching them.” - The New York Times

Festival administrators canceled controversial director Milo Rau’s play The Pelicot Trial, allegedly over Rau’s criticism of the Serbian government last year; consequently, the festival’s artistic director resigned. Artists say the government — which has been facing months of protests over corruption — is putting political pressure on the festival and slashing funding. -...

“The venerable Chicago-based improvisational comedy institution has quietly built out a surprising side-hustle: Using the fundamentals and tactics of improv to teach corporate executives and professional athletes how to be better communicators.” - The Hollywood Reporter

John McWhorter: "Mispronouncing someone’s name certainly can be a form of ridicule or dismissal. … But malice is not the only possible explanation for these flubs. As a matter of pure linguistics, it would be surprising if people didn’t have trouble with the name Mamdani.” - The New York Times

“A ‘once in a century’ discovery of a cache of long-lost letters has revealed how the English poet WH Auden developed a deep and lasting friendship with a Viennese sex worker and car mechanic after the latter burgled the author’s home and was put on trial.” - The Guardian

“The Trump administration has revoked the visa for Wole Soyinka, the acclaimed Nigerian Nobel prize-winning writer who has been critical of Trump since his first presidency. … Soyinka previously held permanent residency in the United States, though he destroyed his green card after Donald Trump’s first election in 2016.” - The Guardian

Two days after confetti rained down on Copeland, she spoke about her career at Ballet Theater and what comes next. - The New York Times

In addition to her role in what many consider the greatest British sitcom in history, Scales’s 60-odd-year career ranged through TV series from Coronation Street to Great Canal Journeys and films from Hobson’s Choice to Howard’s End — not to mention Dotty the Demanding Shopper from a set of Tesco commercials. - The Independent...

Able to bring dynamic, highly musical playing to open-minded free jazz, R&B-leaning instrumental grooves and everything in between, DeJohnette is perhaps best known as the drummer in Miles Davis’s fusion period, contributing to albums such as Bitches Brew, Jack Johnson and On the Corner. - The Guardian