AJ Four Ways: Text Only (by date) | headlines only
DANCE
IDEAS
- Some Questions For And About The Suddenly Shuttered Phoenix Symphony
For instance: “Why it hired a new music director … amid much fanfare last March; whether any employees other than CEO Peter Kjome will be paid during the suspension; or what, specifically, is being done to help the musicians and staff whose pay has been cut off.” – Phoenix New Times
- Short-Story Collections May Be Hard To Sell, But A Single Short Story Can Sell To Netflix For A Million Dollars
Why? The “bite-size format appeals to busy studio executives facing mountains of scripts. Buying unpublished stories also allows producers to avoid the hassle of optioning novels, whose fans often expect a faithful adaptation.” – The New York Times
- The Global Rise Of Album Listening Bars
In Seattle’s Shibuya, for instance, “Once the listening room doors open, all drinks, distractions and shoes must be left at the door.” – Salon
- AI Could Never Have Made The Stop-Motion Wildwood
“Every single thing you see onscreen is an artistic choice. You start with a blank canvas, nothing exists. Everything has to be thought through, designed and manipulated by an artist’s hands.” – The New York Times
- Who Will Take Over Portland’s Many City Performance Spaces?
The city only received two propsals to take over the spaces, known as Portland’5 (yes, there are 5 theatres), starting next July. – Oregon ArtsWatch
ISSUES
- Dealers Scramble To Get Work Out Of Art Basel Paris After Surprise Early Closing
Multiple dealers told ARTnews they’d received an email announcing the decision at around 3:30 p.m. on Thursday. By then, many had already suspected Saturday’s opening might be canceled. The loss of Sunday came as more of a surprise. – ARTnews
- Man Arrested For Beheading Iwo Jima Memorial Statue At Quantico Marine Base
“Officers responding to a report of destruction of property at the Marine Corps Base Quantico around 10:31 p.m. saw a man ‘actively damaging the statue with a sledgehammer’ and detained him without incident, Prince William County police said.” – CNN
- Art Basel Paris Is Closing Early Because Of France’s Violent Demonstrations
The art fair had been schedule to run through the weekend, but organizers have decided to shut it down on Friday evening “in light of potential demonstrations across Paris this weekend, and in the interest of safeguarding our visitors.” – Artnet
- Kennicott: The New LACMA Is A Train Wreck
He has achieved what many curators, scholars and museum professionals dream of: A museum that decontextualizes art, mixes it all up in a giant cauldron of visual distraction and isolates it from history and culture. But why? How could this happen to one of the country’s great art collections? – Washington Post (MSN)
- Now Staff At All Four V&A Museums In London Will Strike
“Unionized staff across all four branches of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London announced their intention to strike on October 29 and 30, citing stalled negotiations and allegations of ‘Amazon-style’ working conditions at the newly-opened V&A East Storehouse.” – ARTnews
MEDIA
- A Huge Fire Has Destroyed Hitler’s Nazi Guesthouse
For some reason (the reason being that after WWII, “local officials fought successfully to keep it, seeing it as a historical site that could attract visitors”), it was still standing, and had a popular restaurant. – The New York Times
- “Why Satire Is No Laughing Matter”: An Essay By Sacha Baron Cohen
“Satire doesn’t just needle politicians or regimes — it occasionally helps bring them down. … Historian Ben Lewis credits Soviet joke-telling with helping to topple communism, by making it impossible for even the system’s own enforcers to take it seriously. … ‘Every joke,’ George Orwell observed, ‘is a tiny revolution.’” – Time
- This Year’s Smithsonian Folklife Festival, Booted From The National Mall, Thrived On A Nine-Month U.S. Tour
“Clifford Murphy, the director of the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, which runs the festival, called it a ‘democratizing experience’ — one that added up to more than just making lemons into lemonade.” – The New York Times
- Colombia’s National Museum Is The First Casualty In The New President’s Culture War
Last week, Abelardo de la Espriella, a far-right politician sworn in as President in August, declared a “cultural counterrevolution” and had dozens of artworks and historical objects removed from the Museo Nacional in Bogotá. In response, some 62,000 people demonstrated in the capital, arguing that the President’s action violates Colombia’s 1991 Constitution. – Artnet
- 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)
MUSIC
- Chatbots May Be Bad Writers. But So Are Most Humans
After all, we’ve been producing particle board for a long time. As Orwell observed (in pre-chatbot 1946!), “prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house.” – The Walrus
- How Politics Has Hollowed Out Scientific American, The Oldest Magazine In The US
“Interviews conducted this summer and fall with a over a dozen current and former Scientific American employees depict a magazine that, especially over the past two years, has struggled to protect its editorial independence in the face of sometimes overwhelming pressure from its corporate ownership.” – The Nation
- Hundreds Of Authors Skip Class Action Case And Sue Meta/Facebook Individually
“Nearly 300 authors filed (separate) copyright infringement claims against Meta Platforms on October 19 in (Federal court in San Francisco), alleging the company trained its AI models on pirated copies of their books and, more recently, on physical books it bought and scanned without a license.” – Publishers Weekly
- Publisher Cuts Ties With Author Thélyson Orélien Over Alleged AI Use In His Hit Novel
“Orélien has denied allegations that he used AI on his breakthrough novel (C’était ça ou mourir) and, last week, Canadian publisher Les Éditions du Boréal said it was standing by the 38-year-old writer. But on Wednesday, Boréal said it had conducted a further investigation” and concluded that Thélyson did use AI. – The Guardian
- 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
PEOPLE
- Some Questions For And About The Suddenly Shuttered Phoenix Symphony
For instance: “Why it hired a new music director … amid much fanfare last March; whether any employees other than CEO Peter Kjome will be paid during the suspension; or what, specifically, is being done to help the musicians and staff whose pay has been cut off.” – Phoenix New Times
- Short-Story Collections May Be Hard To Sell, But A Single Short Story Can Sell To Netflix For A Million Dollars
Why? The “bite-size format appeals to busy studio executives facing mountains of scripts. Buying unpublished stories also allows producers to avoid the hassle of optioning novels, whose fans often expect a faithful adaptation.” – The New York Times
- The Global Rise Of Album Listening Bars
In Seattle’s Shibuya, for instance, “Once the listening room doors open, all drinks, distractions and shoes must be left at the door.” – Salon
- AI Could Never Have Made The Stop-Motion Wildwood
“Every single thing you see onscreen is an artistic choice. You start with a blank canvas, nothing exists. Everything has to be thought through, designed and manipulated by an artist’s hands.” – The New York Times
- Who Will Take Over Portland’s Many City Performance Spaces?
The city only received two propsals to take over the spaces, known as Portland’5 (yes, there are 5 theatres), starting next July. – Oregon ArtsWatch
PEOPLE
- Some Questions For And About The Suddenly Shuttered Phoenix Symphony
For instance: “Why it hired a new music director … amid much fanfare last March; whether any employees other than CEO Peter Kjome will be paid during the suspension; or what, specifically, is being done to help the musicians and staff whose pay has been cut off.” – Phoenix New Times
- Short-Story Collections May Be Hard To Sell, But A Single Short Story Can Sell To Netflix For A Million Dollars
Why? The “bite-size format appeals to busy studio executives facing mountains of scripts. Buying unpublished stories also allows producers to avoid the hassle of optioning novels, whose fans often expect a faithful adaptation.” – The New York Times
- The Global Rise Of Album Listening Bars
In Seattle’s Shibuya, for instance, “Once the listening room doors open, all drinks, distractions and shoes must be left at the door.” – Salon
- AI Could Never Have Made The Stop-Motion Wildwood
“Every single thing you see onscreen is an artistic choice. You start with a blank canvas, nothing exists. Everything has to be thought through, designed and manipulated by an artist’s hands.” – The New York Times
- Who Will Take Over Portland’s Many City Performance Spaces?
The city only received two propsals to take over the spaces, known as Portland’5 (yes, there are 5 theatres), starting next July. – Oregon ArtsWatch
THEATRE
VISUAL
- Why Some Youth – The Ones Who Joust On Bikes, For Instance – Are Going Medieval
One “emerging medieval strand [is] ‘wenchcore,’ which offers ‘a more acceptable voracious sexuality, the ribald, singing, dancing, drinking, doesn’t-need-to-be-perfect idea of womanhood and of masculinity … more of just whatever goes.’” – The Guardian (UK)
- The Art Of Attention
“You can’t talk about aesthetics,” he wrote, “without talking about the principle of hope and the existence of evil.” Attention, for him, was a matter of life and death, or at least of their cultural equivalents, remembering and forgetting. – The New York Times
- Why Friction Is Necessary For Making Progress
The reality is that friction, despite seeming so antagonistic, is necessary and even productive. The force that resists motion has, since humans first struck a spark from a stone, been the very thing that propels us forward. – Aeon
- The Creative Mindset
Actively shaping this perception, rather than only letting it shape you, is a big part of what makes you creative. You need to actively create an attitude that enables you to do work amidst your circumstances, or even transcending it. – 3 Quarks Daily
- Research: Why AI Won’t Replace Humans At Creativity
While AI can bypass years of artistic training, it cannot replace the transformative experiences that give creativity its deeper meaning. The research suggests that the future of art may lie less in producing impressive works and more in using technology to inspire exploration, meaningful experiences and new ways of seeing the world. – TechExplore