Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
This Year’s International Booker Prize Shortlist
This year’s six chosen books include two translated from languages that have never featured before in the prize. - The Guardian
Music Industry Worries About Threats From AI
Universal Music sent letters to Spotify, Apple Music, and other streaming platforms asking them to block AI platforms from sifting through their copyrighted material...
Soon We Won’t Be Able To Tell What Music Is AI-Generated
The fear is: could the AI end up doing a better job than the artists it is imitating? - The Guardian
Is It Still Possible To Be A Free Thinker?
Thinking for yourself has never been easy, but the question of whether it is still possible at all is of some moment. The key...
Have Podcasts Peaked?
There are currently around three to four million podcasts internationally, but just over half of those have more than three episodes, with only 720,000...
RISD Workers Two-Week Strike Settles With A 20 Percent Pay Hike
A video posted on Twitter by a union “member and contractor coordinator” showed Teamsters and RISD students who were invited to attend the ratification...
How AI Will Make Everyone A Designer
AI has the potential to become a “digital teammate” that can encourage design literacy across the workplace. This technology is poised to expand everyone’s...
The Conceit Of Thinking You’re A Free-Thinker
Free thinkers and sceptics, they imagine themselves as emancipated from imprisoning beliefs. Yet most of what they, and you, know comes not from direct...
Art As Aesthetic Experience, Sure. But Does It Also Move The Needle On Climate...
In the growing sector of the contemporary art world which focuses on environmental issues, participants in the art (artists, critics, and the general audience)...
Some Theatres Are Equipping Staff With Body Cams To Deal With Misbehaving Patrons
"Duty managers are also equipped with bodycams, which – along with the training – often helps to lower the temperature when customer interactions become...
The Insidious Harm Of “Beauty Filters” In Social Media
My findings suggest that girls are internalising and aspiring to the beauty ideals that they are consuming via social media. There is a pressure...
Might Movie Theatres Switch From Projectors To LED Screens?
A projection system, true to its name, projects images onto the big screen. An LED wall is akin to a sophisticated, massive TV screen,...
Can Apple’s New Classical Music Streaming Service Solve The Business Model?
While Apple Music Classical is a step in the right direction, classical music’s streaming problem will not be so easily solved. - MusicBusiness Worldwide
The Pure, Simple Mathematics Of Great Poetry
Baumgarten’s theory of good poetry had a kind of absurd, computer-sciencey brilliance to it: good poetry is simply a large quantity of sensate thought. The trick...
How Game Creators Are Thinking About Their Craft Right Now
Each year a number of key trends stand out. For 2023 it was applications of artificial intelligence (AI) for game development, with the future shape...
Louis Menand: Grappling With The Root Of Creativity
Do you study creativity by analyzing people commonly acknowledged to be creative and figure out what they all have in common? Or could someone...
I Am In A Relationship With The Internet
Barely more than a decade later, the internet is not the tool. I am the tool. Somehow, I have been instrumentalized by the internet,...
How We Might Look At Vermeer
One reason we keep missing the mark is that Vermeer’s era straddled two quite different ideas of what painting might be—the old one of religious...
A Growing Movement To Change The American Kids Learn To Read
The movement, under the banner of “the science of reading,” is targeting the education establishment: school districts, literacy gurus, publishers and colleges of education,...
A Literary Magazine Dies — What That Says About Our Culture
The American magazine is in a state of decay. Now known mostly as brands, once sumptuous print publications exist primarily as websites or YouTube...
An Existential Question About Journalism
Who picks up the tab of paying for journalism when the audience won’t, and how does that change the truths that we journalists want...
Why Aren’t Canadian Movie Box Office Numbers Reported?
The website Box Office Mojo lists data on the top grossing films in more than 70 countries, but not Canada. Why are there no...
After A Year, Spotify Kills Its Wordle-Inspired Music Game
First appearing in February 2022 amid a surge of games that used the format of Wordle, which the New York Times bought in January of...
After A Century, Has Music As A Business Died?
We are a long way from understanding the ramifications of having it all available at the click of a button. Still, music will survive....
How Do We Separate The Artist From The Transgressions?
How do we weigh an artist’s accomplishment against his personal wickedness? “Do we believe genius gets special dispensation, a behavioral hall pass?” Should we...
