The ideas of “Good” and “Evil” are premised on some concept of “Value.” That is, “Good” and “Evil” can only be real if some things are “better” and some things “worse.” - 3Quarks Daily
"(He was) a pioneer, using free-spirited compositional techniques that left much to chance, incorporating ... traditional Japanese elements and instruments but also electronic music. He was known for collaborations that defied the boundaries of genres, working with Jasper Johns and Merce Cunningham, as well as innovative Japanese artists ... (including) Ono." - AP
"It's the eternal problem where you make a deep, instinctual connection with something ... but then you move through it, you put it out there, ... and then we go through this process where somehow the person that it's moved through has to make sense of it." - The New York Times Magazine
In terms of the music-making, Justin Davidson observes, Blanchett and filmmaker Todd Field do very well. But Lydia Tár's awful behavior? She could've gotten away with much of it decades ago, but not now. And, alas, no female conductor has yet had the opportunity for anything like Tár's career. - Vulture
"The Virtual Museum of the Spanish Civil War, ... which bills itself as the 'first museum dedicated to this central event of 20th-century history', tackles topics that were long taboo under Franco and which remain problematic" — which is to say extremely controversial — "for many today." - The Guardian
"Organizations are now accepting the fact that they will need an online presence, but ... they (also) want to be able to focus on their live performance activities. Where will that leave the internet initiatives created during the shutdown? Will they flourish or be starved of resources?" - San Francisco Classical Voice
"You may have already forgotten about it, but Vault by CNN launched in the summer of 2021 as a marketplace for its own NFTs (non-fungible tokens) that would 'offer collectors the opportunity to own a piece of history.'" Well, it did last 15 times longer than CNN+ did ... - The Verge
Among the institutions damaged by missile fire, reported Ukraine's culture minister, are the Kyiv Art Gallery, Taras Shevchenko Kyiv National University, the National Philharmonic, the National Research and Restoration Center, and the National Natural Science Museum. - ARTnews
Don’t worry about superintelligent A.I.s trying to enslave us; worry about ignorant and venal A.I.s designed to squeeze every penny of online ad revenue out of us. And worry about police agencies that gullibly think A.I.s can anticipate crimes before they occur. - Slate
Spotify metrics we studied — including acousticness, danceability, duration, energy, explicitness, instrumentalness, liveness, speechiness (a measure of the presence of spoken words in a song), tempo and release year — were not strong predictors of the song’s popularity. - The Conversation
To maintain their positions, the normals conform to social conventions, even as they aspire to higher status. Individuals’ decisions about when to switch from one convention to a new one drive cultural changes. - Wall Street Journal
Launched in September, the campaign urges Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly to submit an official request for the return of the stone and 16 other artifacts removed from the country by illegal or unethical means. The document has already amassed more than 2,500 signatures. - Artnet
Lansbury was the winner of five Tony Awards for her starring performances on the New York stage, from “Mame” in 1966 to “Blithe Spirit” in 2009, when she was 83, a testament to her extraordinary stamina. Yet she appeared on Broadway only from time to time over a seven-decade career. - The New York Times
Ahead of Toronto’s municipal election in late October, plaques like those normally found in an art museum have sprung up across the city, in an exercise in guerrilla criticism that laments a city in decline – and skewers its mayor, John Tory, for what it describes as the policies of austerity and complacency. - The Guardian
How refreshing it was to see the Booker prize take another turn last month – putting the short in shortlist, as it were – with a record-breakingly succinct nominee: Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan is just 116 pages. The Spectator
