Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
AI-Powered Black Rappers? Created By White Designers? See The Problem?
This isn’t to say that white creators ought not create Black characters at all, but that there is something particularly gut-wrenching about the artificial...
Awesome! The Debasement Of Our Linguistic Filler-Inners
We go straight to “amazing”. Or “awesome”. In both cases, as usual, I think we’re on safe ground blaming the Americans. They too, surely,...
Humans Are Wired To Be Good At Math (Oh, You’re Not?)
Research shows that humans are born with an inherent sense of numbers, known as numerosity.5 The concept of numerosity is one of the only high-level cognitive functions...
Public Radio Expands To Urban Alternative Format
Aiming to bring younger and more ethnically diverse listeners to public radio, the urban alternative format has spread to cities from Denver to Milwaukee,...
German Museums Being Criminally-Investigated For Antiquities Trafficking
Several public museums and universities in Germany have become embroiled in criminal investigations into the widespread trafficking of Middle Eastern antiquities. - The Art...
Dubai’s Proposed City In The Sky (Literally)
Set to be 550-metres tall and 3,000 metres in circumference, the skyscraper would be composed of two interconnected main rings that will house residential,...
Music Of Hate
Historically, songs were employed by labor unions to create a sense of solidarity and move labor rights forward against overwhelming odds. If music can be a...
Man Using AI Wins First Prize In State Fair Art Competition. Other Artists Cry...
Jason Allen did not paint “Théâtre D'opéra Spatial,” AI software called Midjourney did. It used his prompts, but Allen did not wield a digital...
What Do We Owe The Future? Not Much
The universe is stranger than we can imagine, Albert Einstein is said to have said. Indeed, we should not even be sure there is...
Music Publishers Reach Agreement Over New Rates For Streaming Music
Sources also say that both sides were eager to avoid another protracted, distracting and brutally expensive legal battle, to put it mildly: The fight over...
New Computer Analysis Gives Insight Into Shakespeare’s Language
The Encyclopedia of Shakespeare’s Language project at Lancaster University, deploying large-scale computer analyses, has been transforming what we know about Shakespeare’s language. - The Conversation
Disney Ponders An “Amazon Prime-Like” Membership Program
The program would be somewhat akin to Amazon Prime, which offers advantages such as free shipping, discounts at Whole Foods and a complementary streaming video...
NYC Is Asking Artists For Proposals To Decorate Garbage Trucks (But Not Paying Them?)
Its inaugural edition happened in 2019, when four artists and students in a visual arts class were selected to cover the 400-square-foot blank “canvases”...
A Compelling Takedown Of The Creation Museum
We already have abundant material rebutting creationism on scientific grounds, but the Trollingers explicitly refrain from discussing the science. What they do instead is much more...
How A Book Goes From Idea To Bookstore
How does a debut novel go from a “very messy” draft on a writer’s desk to a published book, on display in bookstores around...
Was Rachmaninoff Really A Radical?
One aspect of Rachmaninoff’s legacy that deserves greater scrutiny is his peculiar resonance with early-twentieth-century American pop music. George Gershwin, the son of Russian...
A Wave Of New Indigenous Dance On Canada’s West Coast
Indigenous dance is always a way to share knowledge and teachings across generations, a way to know and express who you are, and who...
A Lifetime Collecting Books. And Now They Leave Home
My mind wanders back to a final stroll I took through my parents’ library just before the home was sold—acres of empty shelves, a...
Everything Is Boring Now – Our Music, Our Books, Our Theatre. Why?
I can think of no recent novel or film that provoked passionate debate. Public arguments people do have about art — about appropriation and...
NPR Hires An “Audience Editor”
Pablo Valdivia "will collaborate across Newsroom and Programming to identify, develop and distribute content that will appeal to Latinx audiences,” says Emily Barocas, Deputy...
How American And European Musical Tastes Are Diverging
There seem to be several currents in European composition: the heirs of Pierre Boulez, post-serial, and neotonal. Among the younger composers, however, there is...
Next Goal For Artificial Intelligence: Reasoning
The ultimate goal, in Dr. Ferrucci’s view, is that A.I. becomes a trusted “thought partner,” a skilled collaborator at work and at home, making...
A Good Metaphor For Approaching Complexity
The three-body problem is the best metaphor I’ve found for a social complexity that affects us all today—a problem resulting from the interaction of...
Inside Hamburg’s Steinway Factory
A piano has more than 8,000 individual parts. The building process begins with curing the wood, leaving large sheets of maple, beech and mahogany...
Security For Art In Canada Is Lax, Say Experts
However it happened, it's clear those who stole a world-famous portrait of Sir Winston Churchill from the Château Laurier planned the heist meticulously. It...
