AJ Four Ways: Text Only (by date) | headlines only
DANCE
IDEAS
- Not A Huge Surprise, But That One AI-Generated ‘Band’ Was An Elaborate Hoax
“A Canadian who duped journalists in an elaborate AI music hoax says he apologizes to anyone hurt by his experiment but that it’s been ‘too fascinating’ to turn away from.” – CBC
- A Strad That Disappeared At The End Of WWII May Have Resurfaced
“The case of the Mendelssohn Stradivarius highlights the opaque trade for rare instruments, in which details about provenance, or the history of previous ownership, are often not well documented or, in some cases, intentionally obscured.” – The New York Times
- Netflix’s Animated K-Pop Band Is Beating Flesh And Blood Bands On Spotify
Perhaps this is not a surprise in a time of AI slop, but at least the villainous, fictional Saja Boys’s songs are performed by real-life musicians on the high-debuting soundtrack. – Vulture
- Is Digital Security Even Possible In An Age Of Dictatorship?
Likely not, but people, and groups, persist in countries where the consequences can be dire. For instance, “the government of El Salvador has created an entire infrastructure to have not only social, but also digital control of the citizenry.” – Wired
- How A Whole Team Creates The Anxiety Inducing Sounds Of The Bear
“The sound team has anxiety-heightening tricks. ‘Whether it’s some repetitive sound that starts speeding up, like some chopping or whatever. Just adding, adding, adding, adding.’” – Variety
ISSUES
- After Epically Bobbling A Venice Biennale Selection, Creative Australia CEO Faces Calls To Resign
An external review “recommended a review into Creative Australia’s governance processes, better training for future board members, and the urgent appointment of a board member with deep visual arts expertise.” Many in the visual arts community want to go a whole lot farther. – The Guardian (UK)
- Gallery Powerhouse Blum Will Lay Off Staff And Close, Citing Market Downturn
Founded as Blum and Poe in 1994 in Santa Monica, Calif., by Tim Blum and Jeff Poe, the gallery represents some of the most high profile, and expensive, artists working today, including Yoshitomo Nara and Mark Grotjahn, whose artworks have traded for more than $10 million. – Artnet
- The Benin Bronzes: Who Created Them, Who Has Had Them When, Who’s Returning Them To Whom Now And Why
The Netherlands turned over 119 objects to the Nigerian government, while the MFA Boston gave their two directly to the Oba of Benin. “As these two repatriations underscore, questions linger about who should rightfully receive them — the state or the Oba — as well as what restitution looks like in practice.” – Artnet
- Peter Phillips, 86, Britain’s Pioneer Of Pop Art
“He became one of the originators of the British Pop art movement in the 1950s and ’60s. … Phillips layered mundane images of consumer culture and mass entertainment into his vibrantly colored paintings, often with a playful twist.” – ARTnews
- Paris’s Asian Art Museum Sued For “Tibet Erasure”
“Four pro-Tibetan groups in France have filed a legal complaint against Paris’s state-run Musée Guimet, accusing it of attempting to erase Tibet’s cultural identity by renaming its Nepal-Tibet gallery to ‘Himalayan world’ and removing references to ‘Tibetan art.’” – Artnet
MEDIA
- Not A Huge Surprise, But That One AI-Generated ‘Band’ Was An Elaborate Hoax
“A Canadian who duped journalists in an elaborate AI music hoax says he apologizes to anyone hurt by his experiment but that it’s been ‘too fascinating’ to turn away from.” – CBC
- Is Digital Security Even Possible In An Age Of Dictatorship?
Likely not, but people, and groups, persist in countries where the consequences can be dire. For instance, “the government of El Salvador has created an entire infrastructure to have not only social, but also digital control of the citizenry.” – Wired
- British Law Prevents The Victoria And Albert Museum From Returning Looted Objects
“They can get rid of an object only if it is a perfect duplicate; if it is unsuitable for retention in collections and can be disposed of ‘without detriment to students or the public;’ if it is damaged beyond repair.” – The Times
- Barbara Kingsolver, Author Of Demon Copperhead, Is Deeply Worried About What’s Coming For Rural America
The author, who is funneling her profits into a recovery house for women, says, “The damage will be unimaginable. Lots of people will die, lots of wild lands will be destroyed. The damage is terrifying.” – The Guardian (UK)
- Australia Says No To Kanye West After His Song Praising Hitler
“The song proved to be the final strike for Ye. First shared in a social media post on X, ‘Heil Hitler’ has been widely denounced for its racial epithets and antisemitism. It was also subsequently banned on most streaming platforms.” – Los Angeles Times
MUSIC
- Did The Salt Path Seem Like A Good Story?
That’s because the “memoir” (and its sequels, not to mention the new movie starring Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs) was at least partly fiction, covering up theft, a criminal case, and land in France. – The Observer (UK)
- The Euphoria Of Being A First-Time Novelist In One’s Fifties
“Debuting at fifty-three is sweet. And I am so incredibly grateful. The dream I had as a girl—the one I couldn’t say aloud—not in my family—has somehow, astonishingly, come true.” – LitHub
- Room For The Straight White Male Writer?
“Unwilling to portray themselves as victims (cringe, politically wrong), or as aggressors (toxic masculinity), unable to assume the authentic voices of others (appropriation), younger white men are no longer capable of describing the world around them,” Savage, who is 41, wrote. – The New York Times
- There’s Another Great American Novel Whose Centennial Is This Year
“F. Scott Fitzgerald was fulsome in his praise and Sinclair Lewis declared it the ‘first book to catch Manhattan”. … As Gatsby continues to be lionised, analysed and republished — and adapted for film and the musical stage — John Dos Passos’s novel Manhattan Transfer remains a niche concern.” – Prospect (UK)
- Did A Federal Court Just Open Our Libraries Up For AI Plundering?
Let’s call this what it is: a case about borrowed books and a legal system struggling to reckon with machines that never ask before they take. – LitHub
PEOPLE
- Not A Huge Surprise, But That One AI-Generated ‘Band’ Was An Elaborate Hoax
“A Canadian who duped journalists in an elaborate AI music hoax says he apologizes to anyone hurt by his experiment but that it’s been ‘too fascinating’ to turn away from.” – CBC
- A Strad That Disappeared At The End Of WWII May Have Resurfaced
“The case of the Mendelssohn Stradivarius highlights the opaque trade for rare instruments, in which details about provenance, or the history of previous ownership, are often not well documented or, in some cases, intentionally obscured.” – The New York Times
- Netflix’s Animated K-Pop Band Is Beating Flesh And Blood Bands On Spotify
Perhaps this is not a surprise in a time of AI slop, but at least the villainous, fictional Saja Boys’s songs are performed by real-life musicians on the high-debuting soundtrack. – Vulture
- Is Digital Security Even Possible In An Age Of Dictatorship?
Likely not, but people, and groups, persist in countries where the consequences can be dire. For instance, “the government of El Salvador has created an entire infrastructure to have not only social, but also digital control of the citizenry.” – Wired
- How A Whole Team Creates The Anxiety Inducing Sounds Of The Bear
“The sound team has anxiety-heightening tricks. ‘Whether it’s some repetitive sound that starts speeding up, like some chopping or whatever. Just adding, adding, adding, adding.’” – Variety
PEOPLE
- Not A Huge Surprise, But That One AI-Generated ‘Band’ Was An Elaborate Hoax
“A Canadian who duped journalists in an elaborate AI music hoax says he apologizes to anyone hurt by his experiment but that it’s been ‘too fascinating’ to turn away from.” – CBC
- A Strad That Disappeared At The End Of WWII May Have Resurfaced
“The case of the Mendelssohn Stradivarius highlights the opaque trade for rare instruments, in which details about provenance, or the history of previous ownership, are often not well documented or, in some cases, intentionally obscured.” – The New York Times
- Netflix’s Animated K-Pop Band Is Beating Flesh And Blood Bands On Spotify
Perhaps this is not a surprise in a time of AI slop, but at least the villainous, fictional Saja Boys’s songs are performed by real-life musicians on the high-debuting soundtrack. – Vulture
- Is Digital Security Even Possible In An Age Of Dictatorship?
Likely not, but people, and groups, persist in countries where the consequences can be dire. For instance, “the government of El Salvador has created an entire infrastructure to have not only social, but also digital control of the citizenry.” – Wired
- How A Whole Team Creates The Anxiety Inducing Sounds Of The Bear
“The sound team has anxiety-heightening tricks. ‘Whether it’s some repetitive sound that starts speeding up, like some chopping or whatever. Just adding, adding, adding, adding.’” – Variety
THEATRE
VISUAL
- Museums Are Collecting People’s Goals And Hopes For The 250th Birthday Of The United States
And it’s weirdly hopeful, deeply compelling stuff. “People were especially motivated to share their input when they were told that their contributions would be archived for posterity” (assuming the country & institutions, ah, survive). – Hyperallergic
- I Observe. Must I Translate?
Human beings with a lot to say like to make noise. So do crickets, dogs, mice, other insects, rabbits when frightened or being killed, moose, and many, many others. Some of their noises are effective. Some fail to have an effect. – Harper’s
- The Struggle For A “Self” We Recognize
We imagine our choices are free, our selves sovereign, but much of our behavior arises automatically. We are driven by inner conditions, social cues, learned scripts, and neural flows—just as the machine is driven by token prediction and loss minimization. The difference, of course, is that the human brain is plastic. – Hedgehog Review
- We All Read. But Our Reading Has Changed. This Has Changed Our Culture (And Not For The Better)
On average, we spend more than two hours scrolling through such platforms each day. But not all reading is created equal. The mind can skim over the surface of a sentence and swiftly decode its literal meaning. But deep reading — sustained engagement with a longform text — is a distinct endeavor. – Vox
- The Relevance Of Glee, A Decade After It Ended
“I was mad that the representation, whether of teenagers or queerness, was not completely akin to my own real-life experience — this show was my lifeline; the least it could have done was conform to my limited perception of reality, right?” – HuffPost
