“Ukraine is experiencing an unprecedentedly difficult time, when the question of the state’s future is being decided. Taking this into account, it is impossible to carry out responsibly the preparation needed for a large-scale artistic project of international significance like the biennial.”
Archives for February 11, 2014
Netflix Is Experimenting With Artificial Intelligence In Choosing Videos
“Understanding how content providers and subscribers use certain words or phrases could improve search by making more about what users really want and less about what they actually typed.”
London Mayor To Investigate Shortage Of Affordable Artist Studios
“London is home to almost two-thirds of all artists’ studios in the UK, the majority of which are concentrated in the boroughs of Hackney and Tower Hamlets, according to the most recent numbers compiled in the 2010 Cultural Metropolis report.”
Remix: Actors Act Out Internet Comment Strings
“The reconstructions are just that — re-creations of particularly inflamed and idiotic YouTube comment exchanges — except they’re acted out by two well-dressed, middle-aged British men (or men with stellar British accents) who sit in shadowy domestic interiors populated with high-backed armchairs and baroque chandeliers.”
Dozens More Nazi-Looted Art Works Found In Cornelius Gurlitt’s House
The latest finds in Salzburg include paintings by Renoir, Monet and Picasso.
Did The CIA Fund a Generation Of Creative Writing In America?
“What drew writers to Iowa was not the innate splendor of a spontaneously good idea. What drew writers to Iowa is what draws writers anywhere: money and hype, which tend to be less spontaneous than ideas. So where did the money and the hype come from?”
Stolen Strad Returns To The Stage
“The first standing ovation of the evening began before Frank Almond set foot on the stage. He stepped out without the violin to thank the audience, the Milwaukee Police Department, the FBI, any other law enforcement agencies that worked on the investigation as well those who had shown him an enormous outpouring of support over the past two weeks, saying very little about the robbery.”
Broken Trust: College Sells Art For $25 Million To Benefit Its Endowment
“In selling the painting, the college disregarded the policies of several art and museum groups, which state that museums (including those run by colleges) should sell art only to buy more art, not to improve their finances.”
Extra-Sensory: Art That Senses Your Mood
“For good or ill, we are about to find out what happens if you have media built around you, remixed in real time as your mood and engagement changes. But technology can go further than just monitoring and responding to attention levels. Biosensors such as heart rate monitors and EEGs to measure brainwaves make it possible to use emotive media such as film and music to actively affect an audience’s emotions.”
Funding Cuts In Canadian Theatre Spark Existential Debate
Almost all of the 117 English-language groups that were getting funding are seeing cuts – many as much as 7 per cent to 8 per cent – so that 11 new groups could be added to the list. What began as an exercise in the much-vaunted “generational renewal” is raising some hard questions about how thin the gruel can be spread.
How Fast Food Might Be Killing Our Attention Spans
Researchers at the University of Toronto investigated how fast food–which they call an “icon of time efficiency”–affects patience levels, and therefore our ability to “savor” the world around us.
So You Can Watch Technology Break Your Business Model. Or You Can…
“With the current explosive rate of technology we will all find ourselves, at some point in time, in the place of the record labels in the face of illegal downloading. They were just one of the canaries in the coal mine.”
The Arts Get Tax Breaks (So They’re Weak) The NFL Gets Tax Breaks (So They’re Strong) WTF?
“The perennial struggle for survival of non-profit arts groups—which enjoy broad tax exemptions—is often seen as proof of their inherent weakness, their lack of cultural connection, their failure of appeal, when it is in fact a sign of their institutional strength.” But “let’s not forget all the little incentives, the tax breaks, the give aways, that help dominant organizations maintain their dominance. Power, in our society, is self-re-enforcing.”
How Americans Are Isolated From Literature From The Rest Of The World.
Americans “don’t really participate in the big dialogue of literature.” When the internationally celebrated author Herta Müller won the Nobel in 2009, Europeans poked fun at the bafflement of Americans with headlines like: “Amerikaanse Mewedia: ‘Müller, Who the f*** Is Müller?’”
Why I Killed Flappy Bird – Game’s Creator (and Destroyer) Speaks
In the first interview since he withdrew the app, Dong Nguyen says, “Flappy Bird was designed to play in a few minutes when you are relaxed. But it happened to become an addictive product. I think it has become a problem. To solve that problem, it’s best to take down Flappy Bird. It’s gone forever.”
Folio Prize Announces Inaugural Shortlist of Eight Books
“Born from frustrations with the Man Booker, the Folio chose eight writers from the US, Canada and Britain, all of whom ‘take risks’.”
First There Was Binge-Watching, Then Binge-Reading, And Now Binge-Publishing
“While the television industry has begun catering to impatient audiences by releasing entire series at once, the book business is upending its traditional timetable by encouraging a kind of binge reading, releasing new works by a single author at an accelerated pace.”
Is Atheism Irrational?
“Lack of evidence, if indeed evidence is lacking, is no grounds for atheism. No one thinks there is good evidence for the proposition that there are an even number of stars; but also, no one thinks the right conclusion to draw is that there are an uneven number of stars. The right conclusion would instead be agnosticism.”
Believers and Atheists Are Closer to Each Other Than They Realize
Adam Gopnik: “Surprisingly few people who have considered the alternatives … believe any longer in God. Believe, that is, in an omnipotent man in the sky making moral rules and watching human actions with paranoiac intensity. … But, just as surely, most noes believe in something like what the Super-Naturalists would call faith.”
A Child Sex Abuse Survivor Explains Why He Willingly Worked With Roman Polanski
Rafael Yglesias, who adapted Ariel Dorfman’s Death and the Maiden for Polanski to film, recounts his own ordeal and explains – with unusual clarity and eloquence – how it has affected his life. He goes on to explain why he gladly agreed to collaborate with Polanski despite the longstanding allegations against the director.
Only Publicly-Funded Theatre Could Have Created a Show Like Matilda
Dennis Kelly, who co-wrote the West End and Broadway hit, writes, “I know with absolute certainty that at that time no commercial producer would’ve gone near me. … If it was my money I wouldn’t have come near me either.”