Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
Algorithms Are Directing How I Grieve For My Dead Mother
I can hide my mom’s photos or block her zombie Facebook account. But I’ve become accustomed to grieving this way. Technology has dictated what...
Smithsonian Kicks Off Multi-Year Project To Reckon With America’s Racial History
“Giving people the reality — here’s the information, here’s a way to contextualize the moment we are in — you can’t build optimism unless you face the...
The Psychology Of Movie Trailer Music
“It’s called ‘trailerizing’ a song. That means changing every aspect of the song but leaving the lyrics. People know the lyrics. The goal is...
Canada’s National Ballet Outside (And It’s So Much More Complicated Than That)
Given such limited capacity and the pent-up eagerness of ballet fans, all four performances were fully booked almost as soon as they were announced....
Luis Alfaro’s Plan To Make LA A Theatre Dynamo
“A theater is best expressed by the work it initiates. I think it’s really important that we not just bring in the great work...
Is Our Digital World Squeezing Out Our Ability To Wander?
The idea of the urban rambler—the flâneur—as a half-belonging creature took hold in the latter half of the nineteenth century, and adopted a variety...
Sotheby’s Hires A Gallery Wrangler. What Does This Signal About The Art World?
What’s changed is not that art fairs have been diminished but that the auction houses built broader sales and marketing platforms in the years...
Why Charlie Watts Was The Engine Behind The Stones
Watts’s drumming was unique. He differed from his peers in the rock drumming pantheon, partly due to being a jazz aficionado, a sensibility that...
Oops! Landmark Study On Honesty Used Fake Data
The data were collected by an insurance company, Dan Ariely says, but he no longer has records of interactions with it that could reveal...
The Fascinating New Science Exploring Consciousness
Consciousness has long been the preserve of philosophers and priests, poets and artists; now neuroscientists are investigating the mysterious quality and trying to answer...
AI Cloned Val Kilmer’s Voice So He Could Speak After Cancer Surgery
The generated voices have gotten more realistic in the age of deepfakes, a technology that uses AI to manipulate content to look and sound...
That Naked Baby On The Cover Of A Nirvana Album 30 Years Ago? He’s...
He's now 30, and on Tuesday filed a lawsuit in a Los Angeles federal court against a host of defendants tied to the album,...
Why Movie Theatres Need Vaccine Mandates
In an uncertain time, vaccine mandates for eligible moviegoers might be the only way to salvage the long-term future of the cinema experience. -...
Almost 5000 COVID Infections Linked To Cornwall Festival
Health officials said 4,700 people who have tested positive for coronavirus confirmed they had attended the festival in Newquay or had connections to it. About three-quarters...
John Cleese Making A Show On Political Correctness
“There’s so much I really don’t understand, like: how the impeccable idea of ‘Let’s all be kind to people’ has been developed in some...
We’re Living Through A Time Of Disasters. Will They Make Us Tougher Or…
After surviving a disaster, a minority of people become more resilient, so that, should another disaster strike, they are better able to cope. For...
The Grateful Dead Archive Contains Thousands Of Streamable Concerts. But What’s Really Cool Are...
Read in bulk, certain repetitions emerge. Recordings are “tasty” and “crispy,” “gifts” and “treats,” but also “killer” and “monsters.” Eyebrows bounce and mouths hang...
Wanted: Theatre Directors Without Vision
"The laser focus on a director’s vision is problematic. It sets the director up as a prophet rather than a leader. It focuses on...
Martin Scorsese On Working With Fran Lebowitz
“My approach to our conversation was to listen to her; I would get angry, happy, inspired,” Scorsese explains. “Fran is, to me, asking very...
Life, Death and Numbers: Ann Patchett on the Members Of The National Academy Of...
The two hundred and fifty members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters are writers, composers, visual artists, and architects. It is a...
Dance Is Physical, Sure, But Why Don’t We Focus More On The Mental Preparation?
In this day and age, it has never been so important to have the tools to cultivate a mindset of self-belief. “Especially nowadays with...
Bret Easton Ellis’ Unconventional Podcast Model
Ellis’s storytelling approach, that of serializing his memoir on a podcast, allows him to exploit both types of unreliable narrator: the one who knows...
Broadway Power Brokers Sign On To Transformative Diversity Reforms
The agreement commits Broadway and its touring productions not only to the types of diversity training and mentorship programs that have become common in...
Some Detective Work: Company Says It’s Figured Out The Deepfakes In Bourdain Documentary
If the company’s analysis is correct, the deepfake Bourdain controversy is rooted in less than 50 seconds of audio in the 118-minute film. -...
A Universal Translator Powered By AI
Aleph Alpha, a startup in Heidelberg, Germany, has built one of the world’s most powerful AI language models. Befitting the algorithm's European origins, it...
