"As the field’s most famous practitioner, and a dedicated anti-racist and feminist, Mary Beard takes a middle position: she believes neither that classics deserves a pedestal nor that it must be destroyed. Recently, in conversation, Beard defended her stance—and spoke about feminist translations, Internet manners, and the fluid properties of the canon." - The New Yorker
"The technology is related to deepfaking, which uses AI to paste one person's face onto someone else. … It involves capturing the facial expressions and movements of an actor in a scene as well as someone speaking the same lines in another language. This information is then combined to create a 3D model that merges the actor's face and...
"We urbanites, who dwell in the medium of public political discussion, also live in the element of opinion. Leo Strauss loved to intimate that a few of us could instead live in the element of knowledge, as if he were hanging up a shingle that read ‘Secrets, this way!’ The irony of saying such a thing in public is...
Kalamandalam Gopi, who's about to turn 84, has been studying and performing the dance-drama form from the Indian state of Kerala for 70 years, taught generations of performers, and set new standards in the genre's stage makeup, gestures, and use of facial expressions. To celebrate his 80th birthday, he chose to perform one of the most demanding roles in...
"Joseph Epstein once wrote that “Of the seven deadly sins, only envy is no fun at all.” He must have been talking about the telecom chief executives. Envy is the driving force behind their explorations — and the reason their efforts repeatedly fail. They are almost always envious of the success of Internet-based companies. They hated Google for making...
"This project takes formal cues from lensed images. It's styled as an episode of Real Housewives run amok, and the team cites French surrealist film, the photography of Man Ray, and the melodramas of Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Douglas Sirk as major inspirations." - The New York Times
With VR evolving at its current rate, movie nights or game nights could eventually turn into cyber nights, a new norm for those under 35. Games would no longer need to be marketed towards one group or identity, and would enable a more casual audience to approach virtual worlds without the traditional complexities. For more experienced audiences, this would...
" an art form that is usually in good condition when first discovered because floors are the first area to be naturally buried over time. But once exposed, mosaics become especially vulnerable to damage by root growth, animals, and humans." - Hyperallergic
"I danced some fabulous ballets and fabulous roles. And yet there’s hundreds more like me — thousands maybe. We might be exceptional in one way: You reached the top level of your career, and you have these pinnacle moments onstage. But at the end of the day, we’re all a gang. We’re all a crew, we’re all a posse...
"Today's sex scenes are first and foremost fun — as ideally sex itself should be — and emphasize the truthful over the tasteful. In some cases, you'll see likable, relatable characters revealing perverse predilections. … Other moments make for embarrassing yet endearing waypoints en route to real intimacy. … Other filmmakers bulldoze the boundaries of which bodies the culture...
"Major publishers have created special collections to promote first-time authors and ethnic minorities while new publishing houses are opening the field to a larger spectrum of writers, styles, and subject matter. … In parallel, writing workshops and graduate degrees in creative writing – once seen as a North American concept – are popping up around the country and acting...
"In the early 1970s, long before the rise of lesbian or gay-friendly acts such as K.D. Lang, Melissa Etheridge, Ani DiFranco and the Indigo Girls, Ms. Dobkin was writing and recording songs that celebrated lesbian life. … music history in 1973 when she released Lavender Jane Loves Women, generally considered the first full-length album by, for and about...
"From Judas and the Black Messiah to H.E.R.'s 'I Can't Breathe,' from the canceling of podcasts to the toppling of monuments to oppression, from White Fragility to Ibram X. Kendi's How to Be an Antiracist: Thanks to the culture we shared in a year unlike any other, the world looks, for better or worse, at least a little different."...
"A violin found in an attic in Italy has been confirmed as a priceless instrument made by Giuseppe Guarneri 'filius Andreae' in c.1705. The age of the wood was confirmed using dendrochronology, and the researchers were even able to prove it came from the same tree as the wood in an already-identified violin by the same maker." - The...
"In a new decision issued by the IPO Cancellation Division, a trademark owned by street artist Banksy has been declared invalid. … The attorney who represented the opposing party in the case" — a greeting-card company — "said 'the real nail in the coffin' that led to the ruling was 'the public comments of Banksy and his lawyer'."...
