AJ Four Ways: Text Only (by date) | headlines only
DANCE
IDEAS
- The Phoenix Symphony Closes
Good Morning,
The Phoenix Symphony will lay off its 66 musicians on November 2 though revenues rose more than 50 percent in two years; endowment gifts are restricted and can’t pay operating costs (Fox 10). San Francisco’s artist grants normally arrive within four weeks of July agreements; in October documentary filmmaker Susannah Smith was still borrowing from her mother for rent (San Francisco Chronicle).
Caryl Churchill’s Triumph, 20 minutes long at London’s Almeida Theatre, takes its emperor’s cruelties from Suetonius and gives his press officer a blond wig and an American accent (The Guardian). Lucy Guerin, who founded Melbourne’s Lucy Guerin Inc 25 years ago, danced publicly for the first time in 13 years before handing the company to Melanie Lane; she thought she could still do the arabesque (The Guardian).
Elliott Management, the hedge fund that owns Barnes & Noble and Waterstones, is expected to take both public next year at $3 billion or more, fifteen years after Amazon was supposed to devour chains like them; James Daunt runs both (The New Yorker).
All of today’s stories below.
- A Maverick Pedagogical Proposition
- Is Caryl Churchill’s Latest Play About One Of Trump’s Succession Of Blonde Press Secretaries?
“Triumph, which has opened at London’s Almeida Theatre, is Churchill’s latest piece of explosive minimalism. Running at just 20 minutes, it skewers contemporary barbarism (via) historical analogy and is a reminder that Churchill … has in recent years developed a form of elliptical drama for which the apt word might be compressionism.” – The Guardian
- Broadway Has A Strong Week
Hamilton was the top grossing show of the week with $2.8 million, followed by The Lion King with $2 million. MJ was the fourth highest grossing with $1.76 million, followed by the Bowen Yang-led Oh, Mary! with $1.5 million. – The Hollywood Reporter
- Hong Kong Overhauls Its System For Performing Arts Funding, And Groups Are Nervous
Since 2008, the territory’s government has funded nine designated major performing arts groups, including the Hong Kong Ballet, Philharmonic, and Repertory Theatre. The city’s chief executive has announced a planned change to a more flexible, “merit-based” system which would make room for more organizations. – South China Morning Post (Hong Kong)
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
- Hong Kong Overhauls Its System For Performing Arts Funding, And Groups Are Nervous
Since 2008, the territory’s government has funded nine designated major performing arts groups, including the Hong Kong Ballet, Philharmonic, and Repertory Theatre. The city’s chief executive has announced a planned change to a more flexible, “merit-based” system which would make room for more organizations. – South China Morning Post (Hong Kong)
- 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
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. – The New Yorker
- 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
- The Phoenix Symphony Closes
Good Morning,
The Phoenix Symphony will lay off its 66 musicians on November 2 though revenues rose more than 50 percent in two years; endowment gifts are restricted and can’t pay operating costs (Fox 10). San Francisco’s artist grants normally arrive within four weeks of July agreements; in October documentary filmmaker Susannah Smith was still borrowing from her mother for rent (San Francisco Chronicle).
Caryl Churchill’s Triumph, 20 minutes long at London’s Almeida Theatre, takes its emperor’s cruelties from Suetonius and gives his press officer a blond wig and an American accent (The Guardian). Lucy Guerin, who founded Melbourne’s Lucy Guerin Inc 25 years ago, danced publicly for the first time in 13 years before handing the company to Melanie Lane; she thought she could still do the arabesque (The Guardian).
Elliott Management, the hedge fund that owns Barnes & Noble and Waterstones, is expected to take both public next year at $3 billion or more, fifteen years after Amazon was supposed to devour chains like them; James Daunt runs both (The New Yorker).
All of today’s stories below.
- A Maverick Pedagogical Proposition
- Is Caryl Churchill’s Latest Play About One Of Trump’s Succession Of Blonde Press Secretaries?
“Triumph, which has opened at London’s Almeida Theatre, is Churchill’s latest piece of explosive minimalism. Running at just 20 minutes, it skewers contemporary barbarism (via) historical analogy and is a reminder that Churchill … has in recent years developed a form of elliptical drama for which the apt word might be compressionism.” – The Guardian
- Broadway Has A Strong Week
Hamilton was the top grossing show of the week with $2.8 million, followed by The Lion King with $2 million. MJ was the fourth highest grossing with $1.76 million, followed by the Bowen Yang-led Oh, Mary! with $1.5 million. – The Hollywood Reporter
- Hong Kong Overhauls Its System For Performing Arts Funding, And Groups Are Nervous
Since 2008, the territory’s government has funded nine designated major performing arts groups, including the Hong Kong Ballet, Philharmonic, and Repertory Theatre. The city’s chief executive has announced a planned change to a more flexible, “merit-based” system which would make room for more organizations. – South China Morning Post (Hong Kong)
PEOPLE
- The Phoenix Symphony Closes
Good Morning,
The Phoenix Symphony will lay off its 66 musicians on November 2 though revenues rose more than 50 percent in two years; endowment gifts are restricted and can’t pay operating costs (Fox 10). San Francisco’s artist grants normally arrive within four weeks of July agreements; in October documentary filmmaker Susannah Smith was still borrowing from her mother for rent (San Francisco Chronicle).
Caryl Churchill’s Triumph, 20 minutes long at London’s Almeida Theatre, takes its emperor’s cruelties from Suetonius and gives his press officer a blond wig and an American accent (The Guardian). Lucy Guerin, who founded Melbourne’s Lucy Guerin Inc 25 years ago, danced publicly for the first time in 13 years before handing the company to Melanie Lane; she thought she could still do the arabesque (The Guardian).
Elliott Management, the hedge fund that owns Barnes & Noble and Waterstones, is expected to take both public next year at $3 billion or more, fifteen years after Amazon was supposed to devour chains like them; James Daunt runs both (The New Yorker).
All of today’s stories below.
- A Maverick Pedagogical Proposition
- Is Caryl Churchill’s Latest Play About One Of Trump’s Succession Of Blonde Press Secretaries?
“Triumph, which has opened at London’s Almeida Theatre, is Churchill’s latest piece of explosive minimalism. Running at just 20 minutes, it skewers contemporary barbarism (via) historical analogy and is a reminder that Churchill … has in recent years developed a form of elliptical drama for which the apt word might be compressionism.” – The Guardian
- Broadway Has A Strong Week
Hamilton was the top grossing show of the week with $2.8 million, followed by The Lion King with $2 million. MJ was the fourth highest grossing with $1.76 million, followed by the Bowen Yang-led Oh, Mary! with $1.5 million. – The Hollywood Reporter
- Hong Kong Overhauls Its System For Performing Arts Funding, And Groups Are Nervous
Since 2008, the territory’s government has funded nine designated major performing arts groups, including the Hong Kong Ballet, Philharmonic, and Repertory Theatre. The city’s chief executive has announced a planned change to a more flexible, “merit-based” system which would make room for more organizations. – South China Morning Post (Hong Kong)
THEATRE
VISUAL
- Arundhati Roy On The AI End Game
Remember how, in Thailand and Indonesia, the ocean drew back from the coastline? People ran out to marvel at the miles of pristine new beach that suddenly emerged, not realising that, far out at sea, a wall of water was building up and would come crashing over them. – Equator
- 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