In a research lab at Penn State, "four pigs — Hamlet, Omelette, Ebony and Ivory — were trained to use an arcade-style joystick to steer an on-screen cursor into walls. … And the pigs even continued playing when the food reward dispenser broke — apparently for the social contact." - BBC
When the idea and the office of the president was regarded with a sort of reverence, presidential representations were more heroic, historian Dean J. Kotlowski writes, pointing to the “schmaltzy, character-themed biographies” of the 1930s through early ’60s. And in a sort of reversal, where a fictional representation led to a very nonfictional one, researchers Michael P. Rogin and...
"Following his enlistment in the military in World War II, only ten days before he would age out of eligibility for active service, Wilder reported for training in Miami, Florida, on June 27, 1942, having completed the screenplay for Shadow of a Doubt. In what was surely a most unusual training exercise, Wilder quickly participated in what was referred...
"The hidden costs of socially engaged arts practice is inextricably connected to the crisis of social care and service provision. It is also a result of the unwillingness of commissioners of publicly funded socially engaged practice to accept responsibility for the care that participants of the activities they support need, both during and after the project. This amounts to...
Consider, for instance, the new, widely derided "For Mary Wollstonecraft" monument in London. "Why couldn't a statue of Wollstonecraft, the individual woman, be seen as universally inspiring and iconic? It was hard not to view the monument as a victim of its own good intentions, inadvertently becoming yet another example of a female form as emblem of an abstract...
"The use of antidepressants has inadvertently left many of us less able to feel empathy toward others, laugh, cry, dream, and enjoy life just when we need those things the most: in the middle of a global pandemic." - Nautilus
"In 2009, the Green family, owners of the Hobby Lobby chain of arts-and- crafts stores, began acquiring a series of weathered fragments advertised as Dead Sea Scrolls, including this one, … were displayed at the Museum of the Bible. … Last spring, however, scientific analysis proved what a number of biblical scholars had begun to suspect: the sixteen...
"This month, in the wake of an appeals court decision favorable to the city and the recent completion of federal reviews, Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced that the Obama Presidential Center, including a 235-foot tower and major taxpayer-supported infrastructure, would finally be getting underway." - Chicago Reader
"Plans to mark the 800th anniversary of Burgos's magnificent Gothic cathedral with three enormous new bronze doors have ushered in an unholy row, with UNESCO advising against the project and critics attacking the €1.2m portals as an 'artistic outrage'. … More than 31,000 people have signed an angry petition attacking the new doors as 'an eyesore however you look...
"The new Netflix series Amend: The Fight for America, produced by Will Smith and Larry Wilmore, seeks to not through song, but extended, sleek, bingeable verve. … Amend, which focuses solely on the importance and liberties granted by the 14th Amendment, stretches across six hour-long episodes, each devoted to a different area of interest: citizenship, love, women's rights,...
Chris Jones: "The issue now is the future of an institution that is not just a major tourist draw to Chicago but one of the very few avenues for diverse, Chicago-based comedic talent to move to a national stage. A decades-long success record needs no reiteration here, nor does the entertainment-industry dominance asserted by the coastal cities that typically...
"I am honored and humbled by their intention but I have asked the leaders of the state legislature to remove the bill from any and all consideration. Given all that is going on in the world, I don't think putting me on a pedestal is appropriate at this time. … Perhaps after I'm gone if you still feel I...
"An ambitious £288m concert hall that was supposed to be 'the Tate Modern of classical music' has been scrapped by the City of London Corporation, which said the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic made the plan impossible to complete." The recently-announced departure from London of the project's highest-profile advocate, Simon Rattle, probably made this decision inevitable. - The Guardian
Martin Kettle: "Justifying the cost, the priority, the location and the uses to which the hall would be put were all delicate tasks in any case. It was hard not to see it as an elite project, only distantly connected with wider public need at a time when funding was being squeezed." Then came Brexit, followed by COVID. "It...
As the Australian government pushed the social media giant, along with Google, to pay news outlets there for use of their material for links, the search engine made deals, while Facebook decided to block all news links in the country as of Thursday. That morning, more than 250 Australian cultural organizations found their Facebook pages wiped clean: it seems...
