AJ Four Ways: Text Only (by date) | headlines only
DANCE
IDEAS
- Listeners Are Turning Against AI Music
Streaming services, notable musicians and fans are confronting the growing presence of AI-generated music and drawing lines in the sand. On Tuesday, Spotify announced it had removed about 50m songs considered AI slop from its recommendations to users over the past year. – The Guardian
- Did Hollywood Really Need Netflix?
“The movie business needed Netflix to wake up. They needed a real disruptor… Maybe we are now entering a period where the relationship works the other way around, with Netflix being inspired by the movie business. I think the two worlds are additive.” – Deadline
- To Say Goodbye To Her Dance Company, Lucy Guerin Performs Onstage For First Time In 13 Years
“I have found it incredibly confronting, to be honest,” she says, hours before the premiere. “Part of me thought I could still do all those things if I just got back in the studio and trained a bit. But I’m afraid that wasn’t the case.” – The Guardian
- Netflix Is Making Money. That’s Not Enough
For the year, Netflix said, it expects revenue growth to be 13 percent, roughly in line with its previous estimates. Shares dropped more than 5 percent in after-hours trading. The company acknowledged the undercurrent that led to the recent tumult: concern about stagnating attention time on its service. – The New York Times
- The Battles Over Jimmy Buffet’s Estate
Three years after Jimmy’s death, the family is locked in a legal dispute over that Margaritaville fortune. It has upended the fun-loving vibes the musician spent his life cultivating, with the family seeming rudderless without Jimmy as their figurehead, according to court documents and interviews. – The Wall Street Journal
ISSUES
- Could AI Help Identify The Unknown Subjects Of Centuries-Old Portraits?
“Identifying a sitter in a portrait is a tricky art-historical task that involves a study of provenance, inscriptions, archival documentation, iconographic juxtaposition, collection history, and costume and jewelry. Could present-day technologies be another item in the researcher’s tool kit?” A project in Switzerland is giving it a try. – ARTnews
- Historic City Hall Is Burned Down During French Riots
In Limoges, the 19th-century Hôtel de Ville, which had historic landmark status, was destroyed by arson during the violence that has convulsed much of France in recent days. One suspect has been arrested. – Euronews
- Donors Are Trying To Save Artworks At The Kennedy Center
Donors who have given artwork to the institution are trying to reclaim their gifts, fearing for their safety amid a renovation and in the wake of layoffs. They are not convinced that the leadership, largely appointed by Trump, values the artworks as part of the institution’s holdings. – ARTnews
- Auction House Phillips Appears To Be Reinventing Its Business
In conversations with several people with intimate knowledge of Phillips, past and present, it appears Phillips has decided it doesn’t want to be the same company it spent the last decade trying to become. – ARTnews
- While Partly Closed For Construction, Broad Museum In L.A. Will Lend Scores Of Artworks To Paris
“The museum announced Tuesday that it’s shipping 164 works to the Frank Gehry-designed Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris for its most extensive exhibition ever mounted outside Los Angeles. The show will open April 21 and run through Aug. 30,” as the Broad finishes major construction on a new extension. – Los Angeles Times (Yahoo!)
MEDIA
- San Francisco Has Not Paid Artists The City Grants They Were Awarded This Year
“In typical years, grant agreements are sent in early July, with artists getting money in hand within four weeks. As of October, multiple artists still haven’t received a dime, and at least two received their grant agreements only after the Chronicle wrote the commission to ask about the delay.” – San Francisco Chronicle (Yahoo!)
- What’s Behind The Current Wave Of Theater, Film, Literature, And Other Art About AIDS
Much of the new work being done has a sense of mission — a feeling that, 45 years after the epidemic first broke out, something many gay people today are too young to remember — a struggle that changed our world cannot be permitted to recede into mere abstraction. – T — The New York Times Style Magazine
- Did Drought Really Cause The Collapse Of Ancient Maya? New Studies Cast Doubt
Taken together, the research is part of a shift in how researchers have come to consider one of antiquity’s great mysteries, awakening yet another fierce debate in academia over the effects of climate on civilizations, and why they fray. – Washington Post
- Ticket Broker Sued In $120M Ticket Bot Scheme
The DOJ and FTC allege that REPS & Co violated the Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act by opening thousands of accounts across Ticketmaster, AXS and other ticket services and circumventing the ticket platforms’ purchase limits. – The Hollywood Reporter
- Will Humans Still Know How To Clean It Up When AI Flubs Major Tasks?
“As people become less involved in a task, they can become less prepared to step in when needed. Researchers have called this the out-of-the-loop performance problem.” – The Conversation
MUSIC
- Will Wikipedia Survive AI?
It was neither the first online encyclopedia—Britannica had a web presence by 1999—nor even the first that users could edit. Rather, its vitality arose from the community of obsessives whom it attracted, and its decline has coincided with the market’s capture of their creativity. – The New Yorker
- Jeffrey Daunt And The Culture Of Reading
Actually, in America, the reading of books is up. Sales of print books have increased nearly twenty-five per cent from a decade ago. The number of independent bookstores in the United States has climbed steeply since 2009, with a seventy-per-cent increase since 2020.
- France Gets A New Literary Prize Specifically For Books Written With AI
“The Prix Pascal will open for submissions on 2 November, inviting French-language writers to submit manuscripts alongside an initial prompt of no more than 100 words and a technical account of the language model and generation process used. The competition is open to non-professional writers and those working in the literary sector.” – Firstpost
- YouTube Intends To Start Offering Audiobooks
“YouTube has weighed bundling the product in its ad-free YouTube Premium service, which starts at $15.99 a month and includes access to music and videos, the people said. Like other streaming platforms vying for consumers’ attention, YouTube has packaged offerings together to make lucrative subscriptions more appealing.” – The Wall Street Journal (MSN)
- Writers Are Struggling To Prove They’re Human
As AI-generated writing floods the internet, more people are trying to detect which creators are using such tools to spin up copy. That means writers penning all their own work—and people who acknowledge using chatbots for help—are trying to master something they never worried about before: how to sound human. – The Wall Street Journal
PEOPLE
- Listeners Are Turning Against AI Music
Streaming services, notable musicians and fans are confronting the growing presence of AI-generated music and drawing lines in the sand. On Tuesday, Spotify announced it had removed about 50m songs considered AI slop from its recommendations to users over the past year. – The Guardian
- Did Hollywood Really Need Netflix?
“The movie business needed Netflix to wake up. They needed a real disruptor… Maybe we are now entering a period where the relationship works the other way around, with Netflix being inspired by the movie business. I think the two worlds are additive.” – Deadline
- To Say Goodbye To Her Dance Company, Lucy Guerin Performs Onstage For First Time In 13 Years
“I have found it incredibly confronting, to be honest,” she says, hours before the premiere. “Part of me thought I could still do all those things if I just got back in the studio and trained a bit. But I’m afraid that wasn’t the case.” – The Guardian
- Netflix Is Making Money. That’s Not Enough
For the year, Netflix said, it expects revenue growth to be 13 percent, roughly in line with its previous estimates. Shares dropped more than 5 percent in after-hours trading. The company acknowledged the undercurrent that led to the recent tumult: concern about stagnating attention time on its service. – The New York Times
- The Battles Over Jimmy Buffet’s Estate
Three years after Jimmy’s death, the family is locked in a legal dispute over that Margaritaville fortune. It has upended the fun-loving vibes the musician spent his life cultivating, with the family seeming rudderless without Jimmy as their figurehead, according to court documents and interviews. – The Wall Street Journal
PEOPLE
- Listeners Are Turning Against AI Music
Streaming services, notable musicians and fans are confronting the growing presence of AI-generated music and drawing lines in the sand. On Tuesday, Spotify announced it had removed about 50m songs considered AI slop from its recommendations to users over the past year. – The Guardian
- Did Hollywood Really Need Netflix?
“The movie business needed Netflix to wake up. They needed a real disruptor… Maybe we are now entering a period where the relationship works the other way around, with Netflix being inspired by the movie business. I think the two worlds are additive.” – Deadline
- To Say Goodbye To Her Dance Company, Lucy Guerin Performs Onstage For First Time In 13 Years
“I have found it incredibly confronting, to be honest,” she says, hours before the premiere. “Part of me thought I could still do all those things if I just got back in the studio and trained a bit. But I’m afraid that wasn’t the case.” – The Guardian
- Netflix Is Making Money. That’s Not Enough
For the year, Netflix said, it expects revenue growth to be 13 percent, roughly in line with its previous estimates. Shares dropped more than 5 percent in after-hours trading. The company acknowledged the undercurrent that led to the recent tumult: concern about stagnating attention time on its service. – The New York Times
- The Battles Over Jimmy Buffet’s Estate
Three years after Jimmy’s death, the family is locked in a legal dispute over that Margaritaville fortune. It has upended the fun-loving vibes the musician spent his life cultivating, with the family seeming rudderless without Jimmy as their figurehead, according to court documents and interviews. – The Wall Street Journal
THEATRE
VISUAL
- How Intuition Works
The key is to see that intuition works in much the same way as perception, in that both can directly present something to us as actual. Once we understand what gives perception this feature, we can see why intuitions might involve exercising the same basic kind of cognitive capacity. – Aeon
- Brewster Kahle: Why The Internet Needs A Memory
Many people assume that once something is published online, it will remain forever retrievable. The saying that “the internet never forgets” has produced a dangerously false sense of permanence. In reality, the internet forgets continuously. Websites are constantly revised, deleted, and abandoned altogether. – The Atlantic
- The Harms Of Zombie Copyright
Fifty years ago today, copyright law in America changed fundamentally. That change was an accidental disaster for both creators and the culture they create. – Lawrence Lessig
- Does AI Collapse The Need To Get Bigger?
AI is making enterprise-grade capabilities available to companies that are a fraction of the size and without all of the bureaucratic weight that historically came along with it. If Goldberg is right, the rules of competition are changing for good, and companies no longer need to be big to compete. – Wired
- Creating Art In A Time Of International And Creative Crisis
Elif Shafak’s latest book “arose out of our own historical moment, which Shafak has dubbed ‘The age of three As: Angst, Anger and AI.’” – The Guardian (UK)