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- Hollywood Shrinks. Microdramas Boom. The Onion Wins.
Good Morning,
Today’s most interesting stories aren’t about what culture is making. They’re about the containers it’s making it in. Investigative newsrooms are turning spying scandals and vote-rigging exposés into video games (Nieman Lab) — three billion gamers is a bigger room than any homepage. Hollywood is contracting everywhere except microdramas, the vertical 90-second serials headed for $1.5 billion in US revenue this year (Reuters). And The Onion’s takeover of InfoWars, which could have stayed a one-note gag, now out-draws Alex Jones himself (TheWrap).
Regional theaters can finally produce Les Misérables now that the last tour has closed, and they are not waiting around (The New York Times). The Bolshoi is on the losing side of the same mechanism: a fraud investigation over Grigorovich’s choreographic legacy puts 11 productions, Nutcracker and Swan Lake among them, in doubt (Gramilano). Dance/USA’s incoming director skips the euphemisms entirely: the existing structure “is not sustainable” (Dance Magazine).
Meanwhile the Rijksmuseum has put 840,000 works online, free to download and edit (Open Culture), and Getty curators are grading art emojis across operating systems (The New York Times). Ah, the frontiers of connoisseurship…
All of today’s stories below.
- Marina Abramović Is Making Art With, Of All Things, Balloons
“Snowy/Windy/Spring on Planet Z, the latest installation by the performance artist Marina Abramović, opened earlier this month at New York’s new Balloon Museum, which bills itself as ‘the first permanent home for inflatable art’.” – The Guardian
- Research: Why We’re Bothered More When We Think People Are Wrong (And It’s Not Just A Different Opinion)
Our new research finds that people are more disturbed by others’ beliefs when they feel those beliefs are not merely different from their own but are based on incorrect information. – The Conversation
- Some Media Outlets Are Adapting Their Investigative Journalism Into Video Games
“More than three billion people globally play some form of video games. For a media industry with falling revenues and growing audience distrust, games — ranging from simple quizzes to fully-fledged downloadable games and augmented reality experiences — have become a new way to engage and inform audiences.” – Nieman Lab
- Dance USA’s New Director On The State Of The Field
The entire field is facing heightened levels of uncertainty, and we have not been spared. Dance/USA needs to reimagine and rebuild its business model. Our existing organizational strategy and structure are not sustainable. I took this job knowing that that was the case. – Dance Magazine
- The Onion’s Takeover Of InfoWars May Be The Most Interesting Media Story Of The Year
Since The Onion took over Alex Jones’s rabidly right-wing media property and turned it into a parody of itself, the brand has gotten hundreds of thousands of followers on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok. What could have been a one-note joke has become a real business, with viewership exceeding Jones’s own. – TheWrap (Yahoo!)
- Microdramas Are Surging As Hollywood Chases TikTok
Microdramas may be the only thing that’s growing in Hollywood. The format is expected to generate $1.5 billion in revenue in the U.S. this year and jump to nearly $2 billion next year, according to research firm Omdia. – Reuters
- National Symphony Announces New Season (No Kennedy Center)
The orchestra said that from September to June, it will stage some 60 performances at six venues across the region. – Washington Post (MSN)
- Researchers Use AI To Define Musical “Fingerprints” Of 20 Jazz Greats
In a new paper in Nature Machine Intelligence, three University of Cambridge researchers used AI to help better define the musical tics of 20 of the most celebrated jazz pianists of all time. – Scientific American
- The Rijksmuseum Has Digitized 840,000 Artworks And Put Them Online
The museum promised to “bring the museum to you,” and it has delivered not only with its extensive digital collection, free for downloading, sharing and editing with a free Rijksmuseum account, but also with informative series on its website. – Open Culture
- To Prepare For Playing St. Francis Of Assisi, This Baritone Went To Live With Franciscan Monks
Canadian baritone Philippe Sly, currently starring in the Salzburg Festival’s production of Messiaen’s six-hour opera St. François d’Assise, is staying at the Kapuzinerkloster, a monastery across the Salzach River from the venue, eating with them in the refectory and attending every prayer service he’s available for. – The New York Times
- ByteDance Signs AI Copyright Deal With Motion Picture Association
ByteDance and the Motion Picture Association on Monday signed an agreement to strengthen copyright safeguards on the Chinese company’s AI video and image-generation models, months after the Hollywood trade group challenged its handling of intellectual property. – Reuters
- Why Reading Fiction Is Good For Your Brain
The amount of fiction people read seems to be a better predictor of language ability than nonfiction, research finds. And, perhaps even more importantly, research has found that fiction is linked to better social cognition and an increased understanding of the world as a complex place. – Washington Post
- What Are The Best Art Emojis? Getty Curators Have Thoughts…
Curators at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles have taken those variations as an invitation to judgment. In a series of recent social media posts, the museum is rating the appearances of art-adjacent emojis across different platforms and operating systems, leavening scholarly expertise with a liberal sprinkling of cheek. – The New York Times
- Why Writing Detectors For AI Won’t Work
Either human speech and AI speech progressively assimilate, causing a collapse in any meaningful distinction, or language becomes a contested social signal. This second scenario would essentially be a game of whack-a-mole across the English language. – Washington Post
- A Veteran Boston Critic On The Real Problem Behind The Boston Symphony Mess
“This crisis largely seems unconcerned with serious musical issues, such as the quality of the playing and the choice of repertoire.” Lloyd Schwartz reminds us that those issues are what really matter here — and that they don’t militate in Andris Nelsons’s favor. – WBUR (Boston)
- A “Great Books” Professor Lets His Students Watch Him Struggle With “The Brothers Karamazov”
Matt Dinan, of St. Thomas University in New Brunswick, Canada, had somehow never read the Dostoevsky classic before last semester. He found himself completely consumed by the novel — and then found his students equally taken with it. The reasons they gave for being so excited were telling. – The New York Times
- Sydney’s Biggest Cultural Project Since The Opera House Sets Its Official Opening Date
Powerhouse Paramatta, a 915 million AUD (US$650 million) museum of applied design and technology, will be Western Sydney’s first major cultural institution. It will open to the public this November 7. – Time Out Sydney
- Bolshoi Ballet Could Lose Rights To Perform Its Most Popular Productions
“Audiences at the Bolshoi Theatre could find themselves without 11 of its most well-known productions – among them The Nutcracker, Swan Lake, Giselle, Spartacus and Ivan the Terrible – after a dispute over the rights to Yuri Grigorovich‘s choreographic legacy escalated into a criminal fraud investigation.” – Gramilano
- Finally! Regional Theaters May Now Produce “Les Miz”
After decades, the last US national tour of the Broadway production has ended, meaning that regional companies can get the rights to produce the show themselves and bring in that sweet. sweet, desperately needed box office revenue. And those companies have wasted no time getting started. – The New York Times
- France’s Planned Ban On Social Media For Under-15s Ruled Unconstitutional
“The Constitutional Council … said the restrictions in the bill disproportionately infringe on minors’ right to freedom of expression and communication. Europe’s would-be first social media ban … had been a flagship policy of Macron’s second and final term.” – Politico
- No Foul Play Suspected In Death Of Actress Hayden Panettiere
First responders in Greenville, SC pronounced her dead at the scene after a 911 call by a friend who found her in cardiac arrest. An overdose is the suspected cause of death. – People
- The End Of Nostalgia?
What if businesses become too good at selling nostalgia? Research I carried out with colleagues suggests that digital technology is changing nostalgia itself. Ironically, by making the past permanently available, companies may be weakening the very notion they are trying to sell. – The Conversation
- All Novels Are Boring Until They’re Not
I call this point in a novel its volta. The term comes from poetry, where it denotes a shift that sonnets exhibit between their opening octave and concluding sestet or between their first 12 lines and final couplet. – Public Books
- Missouri PBS Channel Fears It’s Lost 70 Years Of Archival Data
Nine PBS in St. Louis filed a lawsuit against information management corporation Iron Mountain Data Centers July 28, seeking to recover over 50 terabytes of archival materials stored in one of the company’s Denver-based data centers. – Current
- Mamdani Announces Free Broadway Tickets For Students
“There are so many kids growing up in our city for whom Broadway feels as if it is a world away, like something that only belongs to other people. We are together today to prove differently, to make it possible for kids from Sheepshead Bay to Morrisania (no matter how much money their parents make) to enter that different world. – Playbill
- Close The Kennedy Center? It Might Be The Best Option
Given how thoroughly Trump’s leadership has destroyed the center’s viability as a presenting organization, that is probably the best of a slew of bad options. – Washington Post
- AI Has Plunged Publishing Into Chaos
The spectacular implosions of big book deals over suspected AI use—and fears about who might be next—are forcing a reckoning over the nature of authorship, the relationship between writers and publishers and the industry’s long-term survival. – The Wall Street Journal
- Warning: Screen Time Is Having An Impact On Kids’ Cognitive Abilities
“Our children are less cognitively capable than we were at their age. For nearly two centuries, the west experienced steady generational progress. Each new cohort of children grew up, on average, healthier, happier, and better educated than the last. Until now.” – The Guardian
- AI News Sites Are Now Reporting (And Breaking) News
RuntimeWire has been operating since May, publishing nearly 2,000 stories that it sources by crawling the internet, including court databases, web forums, traditional and new media, company filings, social feeds, and more. – Wired
- How AI Will Damage Children’s Brain Development
During the most foundational period of brain development, social interaction of the sort that AI can now emulate isn’t entertainment for the developing brain. It’s nutrition. Once you see it that way, the right parallel snaps into focus. A more apt comparison than social media is food—more precisely, processed food. – The Atlantic
- Our Ability To Search The Internet Is Dying
Search can no longer pretend to be a neutral gateway to a stable body of knowledge. While the web has always been organized around intermediaries that shape what survives online and who sees it, the internet’s archival function is today breaking down under relentless pressure from stakeholders with very different—and often conflicting—priorities. – The Walrus
- The Anti-AI ‘Hand-Designed’ Trend Is Big, But Also Filled With Grift
“Most telling is Claude’s branding, incorporating hand-drawn illustrations and details that attempt to tell the world, ‘Hey, we’re the more human AI.’” – Fast Company
- Confirmed: Amazon Is Scanning And Then Ripping Up Rare Books
Wow, OK, way to be just obviously evil. “The printed book is destroyed in the process. The logo of the Amazon team that works at this warehouse, called VGT3, is a dinosaur, brandishing its teeth and with a book in its hands.” – 404 Media
- Once Again, Police Are Claiming Classical Music Soothes Crowds Of Rowdy Youth
In one British McDonald’s, a hot spot for fighting and generally antisocial behavior, “measures were brought in including a playlist of classical music in the evenings.” – BBC (Yahoo)