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- Why Did Paramount Agree To Delay Its Warner Deal?
With a $7 million-per-day ticking fee that kicks in starting Oct. 1 — which would cost Paramount $650 million a quarter — why would Paramount agree to such a delay? The key lies in the nine words preceding the June 1 target date: “until five days after the outcome in a trial.” – The Wrap (MSN)
- Sure, We’ve Canceled A Bunch Of Previews, But Our “Game Of Thrones” Play Is Just Fine, Says RSC
“Ticketholders for five preview performances of the play, Game of Thrones: The Mad King, were more than a little dismayed last week when the shows, scheduled for July 20-24, were canceled. … A show on Saturday, July 25, was also called off just hours before the curtain was set to rise.” – The New York Times
- What If More Intelligence Doesn’t Make Us Better?
If we think of intelligence as the ability to extract information from data, then even an infinitely advanced model endowed with infinite compute will be limited by the fact that there’s a limited amount of information that can be extracted from the data. – Noahpinion
- Meet The Messi Of Ballet
In Argentina, they call her the Messi of ballet – although when it comes to who has the finest footwork, they should really be calling him the Núñez of football. – The Guardian
- Authors Have Mixed Feeling About Anthropic “Win”
One possible way for authors to get a fairer shake in the age of AI could be through the licensing of their work to AI companies. – NPR
- The Return Of “Tamizdat”: Why So Many New Russian Books Are Being Published Abroad
“Freedom Letters … (is) one of a growing number of cultural organizations that have joined forces with bookstores, wholesalers and book-fair organizers to build a literary resistance among the Russian diaspora. Together, they publish, sell and distribute books that can’t get through Russia’s restrictive new censorship laws.” – Bloomberg
- After Decades Of Anonymity, One Of The Guerilla Girls Unmasks Herself
“The founding member of Guerrilla Girls known by the pseudonym Liubov Popova has revealed her true identity: she is 83-year-old US-based painter and sculptor, Joyce Kozloff, a major figure in the Pattern and Decoration movement of the 1970s.” – Ocula
- At The Empty Kennedy Center, A Volunteer Tour Guide Soldiers On
“In a dogged demonstration of love and loyalty for an institution that has elevated life for her and millions of visitors, (Sandy Weisswasser) still arrives every Monday for her tour day, knowing she may soon find the doors locked.” – The New York Times
- BuzzFeed To Lay Off More Than One-Third Of Its Staff
“In the first major restructuring move of Byron Allen‘s ownership tenure, … some 180 staffers (are) to be given pink slips companywide. … BuzzFeed, across all its units, had approximately 510 employees prior to the cuts. The company said it expects to see $29 million to $32 million in annualized savings.” – The Hollywood Reporter
- Buffalo AKG Museum (Formerly Albright-Knox) Splits Its Director Job In Two
“Cathleen Chaffee, who currently serves as … Chief Curator, is the museum’s incoming artistic director, while Jillian Jones, AKG’s deputy director, will become executive director. Under a new co-leadership structure, Chaffee will oversee the museum’s exhibitions and public-facing programs. Jones will guide overall strategy, operations and finances.” – Buffalo Toronto Public Media
- Artist Betye Saar Has Died, Four Days Before Her 100th Birthday
“(She) transformed collections of bigoted bric-a-brac — Sambo dolls, ceramic mammies and crude renderings of pickaninnies — into potent works of assemblage that mined the searing history of race in the United States,” most famously in her 1972 piece The Liberation of Aunt Jemima. – Los Angeles Times (Yahoo!)
- “Odyssey” Translator Emily Wilson Rips Christopher Nolan’s Movie To Shreds
“It lacks psychological, emotional, political and ethical depth. Its narrative structure is gimmicky. The writing is abysmal. None of the characters has convincing motivation for their actions or words. There are no sex scenes, and all the food looks horrible.” – London Review of Books
- The frictionless feed
We have more culture available to us than any humans in history, and The Guardian wants to know why the dominant feeling is boredom. Its answer is that frictionless pleasure erodes the appetite it feeds.
College students have stopped reading whole books (The Conversation), though a sharp rebuttal argues the panic is aimed in the wrong direction (Trevor Aleo) — we built an excerpt economy, and now are blaming 19-year-olds for living in it. Video’s format keeps turning vertical because that’s how a hand holds a phone (The Verge). Pop’s big transformations now happen in the fan apparatus rather than in the music (The Conversation). Form follows medium.
Then the literal version: AI companies are buying rare books and cutting the spines off to scan them (Futurism). The books are destroyed so the text can be ingested.
Against all that, 32 Vancouver arts organizations just proposed four new concert halls (Daily Hive), and Pacific Northwest Ballet’s school is taking a big new space in SODO (Seattle Times).
Hadestown‘s filmed version did surprisingly well enough in theaters to earn an extended run (Deadline). The return to theatres continues.
All of our stories below.
- American Classical Music at 250 — Take Three: The Orchestra Gap: Europe vs. the US
The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra going through the motions of Wagner’s “Liebestod” – “diminished motivation: as if the music
- Pop Music’s Biggest Transformations Are No Longer About The Music
On social media, fans don’t just follow an era – they help bring it to life. Through videos, memes, fashion, conversations and creative interpretations, they shape the meanings that come to define a project and extend an album beyond the music itself. – The Conversation
- Literary Crisis? I Think Not
I don’t want to totally wave away the issues these pieces are gesturing towards, but I’d argue the fear that we’re sliding into a post-literate society rests on a category error that feels endemic at this point. – Becoming Literary
- With So Much Abundance, Why Are We Bored?
For anyone with an Internet connection and a little discretionary income, the contemporary moment offers a superabundance of seductive distractions. Why then the pervasive mood of emptiness? Why are so many at once overstimulated and bored? – The Guardian
- Kennicott: Trump’s Smithsonian Complaints Are Laughable
Visitors who pass these signs on the way into the museum may find them concerning; when they pass them on the way out, they will probably find them laughably at odds with what they have just experienced. – Washington Post
- Vancouver Music Organizations Propose Four New Concert Halls
A coalition of 32 performing arts organizations has unveiled an ambitious vision to create four new and/or substantially renovated performance venues in Downtown Vancouver, with four possible location options identified. – Daily Hive
- How Museums Are Using Data To Shape The Experience
Perhaps the biggest opportunity created by detailed data is the ability to provide personalized recommendations. Supplementing traditional curation with analytical methods, more recently including machine learning and artificial intelligence, has become more common. – Ars Technica
- Students Are No Longer Reading Full Books
Before we ask our students to read difficult material, those of us who teach in college owe it to all of them to explain that reading books in their entirety matters. If we won’t, or can’t, then higher education will have a bleak future. – The Conversation
- AI Companies Are Buying Up Old Books And Destroying Them As They Scan
Once focused on helping libraries, distributors, and book shops find and sell books, ISBNdb now helps AI companies bulk-buy anywhere between 1,000 to one million books per order, according to 404. – Futurism
- The Failures To Save The Glasgow School Of Art Building
A 12-year saga of destruction, rebuilding and yet more destruction, all underscored by an unedifying seam of political and institutional wrangling, reached an apologetic conclusion of sorts, with the recent announcement that Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s exquisite art nouveau creation is unlikely to be rebuilt in its original form because of stratospheric cost. – The Guardian
- What The UK Used To Think Of Georgia O’Keeffe
“After her Hayward show in 1993, Britain’s male critics unleashed a torrent of dismissive reviews. She was called a ‘commercial illustrator,’ ‘irredeemably amateur,’ an artist who ‘made good monthly images on calendars’ and ‘grossly overrated.’” – The Guardian (UK)
- What ‘A Chorus Line,’ Now Celebrating Its 50-Plus Anniversary, Taught Us About Theatre
“A Chorus Line celebrates artists’ commitment while demonstrating — both at the story level and in the way the script itself was assembled — how easy it is to bully or exploit them.” – The New York Times
- In The Ongoing Saga Of Portland’s Performing Arts Centers, The Mayor Has Made His Support Clear
Mayor Wilson now supports a 3,000-seat city-owned performance hall at Portland State University, while the venerable, earthquake-unprepared Keller Auditorium would be rebuilt as as 1,200-1,800 seat venue. Keller supporters are incensed. – Oregon ArtsWatch
- The Hadestown ProShot Film Was So Popular This Weekend That It’s Getting An Extended Run
The live show capture came close to toppling Hamilton from its perch. – Deadline
- In A Good News Moment, Pacific Northwest Ballet’s School Is Opening A New, Big Space
“As with many ballet companies, PNB’s school provides significant funding for the organization. Tucker said the school’s income is approximately 18% of the organization’s annual revenue. The school also serves as a feeder both for audience members and eventual company members.” – Seattle Times
- Guy Tudor, Who Brought Obscure Birds To Vivid Life, Has Died At 81
“Digital avian databases like eBird were far in the future when Mr. Tudor first set about documenting swaths of the avian world in watercolors and gouaches renowned for their delicacy and precision, and for the artist’s singular knack for capturing the quiddities of winged creatures.” – The New York Times
- This Booker-Winning Book Set In Taiwan Has Sparked A Cultural Reckoning
The author says she “wanted to tell Taiwanese people, ‘We do not really understand our own land’s history,’” partly because of the time Taiwan was a colony of Japan. – NPR
- From Nearly Forgotten Author To Japanese Literary Hero
“Much of the Japanese fiction translated into English fits into broad categories – cats, crime, coffee shops – but one surprise bestseller stands alone. Sales of books by Osamu Dazai, who killed himself in 1948 aged 38, have rocketed in the last few years.” – The Guardian (UK)
- A High-Quality Bootleg Of ‘The Odyssey’ Leaked And Streamed For Hours On X
A message on X (Twitter) “included a high-quality version of the film, as confirmed by Variety, and climbed to over 2.1 million views within two and a half hours.” – Variety
- Alert: Don’t Throw Away Your Old E-Reader
Of course don’t throw it away – get it to an e-waste recycler or dealer – but also, you can turn it into a Spotify controller or, perhaps coolest of all, a literary clock. – Wired
- The Perfect Books For A Summer At The Pool, The River, Or The Beach
“It is important to follow a balanced diet on holiday. … You need to be able to chop and change depending on your mood, which means fiction and nonfiction. And finally, you need to be able to throw all of these rules out of the window.” – The Guardian (UK)
- Blame Social Media, But First Of All Phones, For Everything Turning Vertical
“Short-form, vertical video has effectively won the internet. Business is booming, and viewers show no sign of tuning out.” – The Verge