ArtsJournal: Arts, Culture, Ideas

IDEAS

A Harvard Student Has Created An Entire Musical For A Korean Disney Princess

Julia Riew's senior thesis at Harvard is "complete with script, screenplay, and more than 15 original songs. Her Disney-inspired work tells the story of a Korean princess named Shimcheong, who’s based on a character from a Korean folktale." Hollywood has noticed. - MSN (Boston Globe)

When We Compare Schools To Factories, We’re Ignoring History

Sure, "we like stories about education that feel true" - but this one simply isn't. And keep in mind that "those who want us to forget (or mis-remember) the past are very much committed to our giving up hope." - Hack Education

Study: Documenting How Humans Have Altered Evolution

They confirmed, for instance, that on average, all over the world, animal species seem to be getting smaller. This runs contrary to a theory of evolution called Cope’s rule, which posits that species should increase in size over time. - Wired

What Happens To Your Brain In A Bad Breakup

Love changes us so deeply—at a physiological level—that when it’s lost, we hurt more than if we had never loved at all. - The Atlantic

The Objects That Have Gone Away

What if these objects had survived? What might that alternative world be like? This idea of a parallel material universe, in which some of our problems are solved by the mere existence different objects, is tantalizing. - The Baffler

What Makes You – Your Body, Not Just Its Memories

Personhood is a property of the whole body, and the whole body is implicated in how both personhood and an individual person can persist in the face of perpetual forgetting. - Psyche

Thinking On Cultural Appropriation

Why is it a problem for a so-called dominant culture to utilize the forms and features of another? The short answer is that it isn’t. Rather, human history is replete with inspired interaction among various ethnicities and the sharing of creative traditions. - American Institute for Economic Research

Berlin Considers Plan To Ban Cars From City Center

Campaign group Berlin Autofrei has proposed a law to limit private car use within the Ringbahn train line in the German capital, an area of 34 square miles. The city government will now formally consider the petition, with a decision due to be announced in February. - Dezeen

A Return To Western Liberalism?… That’s Problematic

When some commentators call for a return to classical liberalism, they forget that it rested on the moral foundations of Jewish and Christian monotheism and the historical contingency of Western global power. Today Europe is post-Christian in its moral culture. - New Statesman

How Do You Know You’re Not Living In A Simulation? (No, Really…)

Can you prove you’re not in a simulation? You might think you have definitive evidence that you’re not. I think that’s impossible, because any such evidence could be simulated. - Nautilus

Why Art Ought To Be A Daily Habit

Arthur Brooks: Engaging with art after worrying over the minutiae of your routine is like looking at the horizon after you’ve spent too long staring intently at a particular object: Your perception of the outside world expands. - The Atlantic

Did Marshall McLuhan Lead Us To Fake News?

McLuhan's doctrine was attractive to the Boomers because it explained that everything the older generation knew, or thought they knew, was an illusion. Everything the Boomer tribe intuitively felt, on the other hand, was real. - Quillette

You Think AI Ought To Make Moral Judgments For Us? (Psst! It’s Already Happening)

Recently, some scientists taught an artificial intelligence software, called Delphi (after the ancient Greek religious sanctuary), to make moral pronouncements. Type any action into it, even a state of being, like “being adopted,” and Delphi will judge it (“It’s okay”). Delphi is a “commonsense moral model.” - Nautilus

Can “Anarchist Architecture” Make Us More Resilient?

"Architecture and anarchy may not seem like the most obvious pairing. But since anarchism emerged as a distinct kind of politics in the second half of the 19th-century, it has inspired countless alternative communities." - The Conversation

The Shortcoming Of Immersive Art

The “immersive entertainment” industry, which includes nondigital experiences such as escape rooms and other content in which the participant feels a sense of presence in an artificial environment, is large and growing, spanning contexts such as live events, arts performances, and museums. - Jacobin

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