Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
State Of The UK Independent Bookstore Biz
Overall, 2022 was a good year for independent bookshops in the UK and Ireland, who saw their number climb to a 10-year high. According to...
How Should We Think About How We Think?
Ask someone how she thinks and you might learn that she talks to herself silently, or cogitates visually, or moves through mental space by...
A Tower In Vancouver That Literally Twists Itself To Conform To Zoning Rules
The Vancouver House is a 490-foot high-rise teetering on a narrow base, twisting and expanding as it rises. The torquing tower serves as a new gateway to...
Reasearch On Newborns Gives Insight To How/Why We Respond To Music
A 2009 study, for instance, found that newborns react to beats — i.e. they anticipate the downbeat of rhythmic patterns, which tends to support the...
The Creative Driver Behind Netflix
“It’s not a science. It’s a big creative endeavor. But it’s about recognizing that people like having more.” - The New Yorker
The Silicon Valley Of 1000 Years Ago That Spawned A Millenium Of Innovations
This culturally and linguistically diverse environment gave rise to innovations that would have lasting legacies in fields including algebra, geography, astronomy, medicine and engineering....
Why Ratmansky Is A Great Fit For NYCity Ballet
Really, the courtship between Ratmansky and City Ballet — a new New York City Ballet under the leadership of its artistic director, Jonathan Stafford, and Whelan...
Minnesota College Lecturer Fired After Showing Image Of Muhammad
After Dr. López Prater showed the image, a senior in the class complained to the administration. Other Muslim students, not in the course, supported...
Will ChatGPT Change Public Discourse?
If I’m going to choose a non-living interlocutor, why would I choose a Large Language Model – essentially a sophisticated search algorithm performed on...
Remembering Frank Galati, Chicago Theatre’s Philosopher King
Slowly, among all the things I learned from Frank (that is, everything of importance that I know), was the understanding that the true mark...
DIY Culture: John Deere Signs Right-To-Repair Deal With American Farmers
The six-page long memorandum specifically requires John Deere to provide farmers and independent repair facilities with access to the company’s tools, software, and documentation...
Columbia University’s New $600M Business School Wrestles With Capitalism
The design of the complex just blocks north of Columbia’s main Morningside Heights campus coincided with business schools around the country coming to terms...
Latest AI Tool: Can Simulate Any Human Voice With A Three-Second Sample
Once it learns a specific voice, VALL-E can synthesize audio of that person saying anything—and do it in a way that attempts to preserve...
An Internet Game That Reveals How Musicians Discover Music
If you really dive into this thing, you’ll begin to learn how musicians hear, how they think, how they remember, how they forget, how...
Clapping As A Performative (And Meaningless?) Gesture
For the nation’s viewers, I think, this juvenile practice communicates something unserious: Which beaming retinue can clap harder for its standard-bearer? - Washington Post
American Historical Society Embroiled In History Wars
“We suffer from an overabundance of history not as a method of or analysis, but as anachronistic data points for the articulation of competing...
Golden Globe Organizers Say They’ve Reformed. Should We Believe Them?
The Globes have long had a reputation for booziness and irreverence. Will the revived ceremony still be seen as a less-staid alternative to the Academy Awards?...
Graphic Novel Imagines What Would Have Happened If Jan. 6th Insurrection Had Succeeded
Drawing on a rich tradition of comics that depict counterfactual and dystopian futures, this graphic novel breathes horrifying visual life into a world in which there...
The Case For Vandalizing Art In The Name Of Climate Change Awareness
We honor many protesters, past and present, who broke the law to advance a good cause. Suffragettes targeted great art in their struggle to...
The Age Of Incrementalism: Have We Got Stuck In A Rut?
Data from millions of manuscripts show that, compared with the mid-twentieth century, research done in the 2000s was much more likely to incrementally push...
Meet San Francisco Ballet’s New Leadership Team
Together, the company’s first-ever female leadership team will strive to innovate in ways that keep it at the vanguard of forward-thinking arts organizations while...
Yay! The Death Of TV Laugh Tracks
Was it only proven brain dead in late 2021, when no sweetened TV sitcoms debuted on U.S. networks during the all-important fall season? -...
Making Theatre On The Edge Of A War Zone
With a country in flames across Poland’s eastern border, I traveled to Krakow last month to erase some of that distance. I wanted to...
Saving 100-Year-Old Pianos From The Landfill
"Pianos do kind of take on the character of 100 years of playing, you know?” says Tim Vincent-Smith, co-founder of Pianodrome - a project...
Who Ya Gonna Call? Ghost-Writer!
Ghostwriters channel someone else’s voice and construct with it a book that has shape and texture, narrative arc and memorable characters, all without leaving...
