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Roberta Smith On 38 Years Of Art Criticism For The New York Times

"Critics need to be more flexible than artists. You have to be open to being changed and pushed into new directions. ... My main goal has always been to point out art that people would enjoy seeing, and to show them how I saw it and enjoyed it." - The New York Times

A Transformative Arts Project For Downtown Calgary

“Today, we don’t just reveal a stunning new design—we come together to celebrate the fact that the largest cultural infrastructure project currently underway in Canada is truly and uniquely Calgarian." - The Architect's Newspaper

The Richard Serra Sculpture So Controversial It Was Put Before A Federal Tribunal

Tilted Arc (1981) was commissioned by U.S. General Services Administration for Federal Plaza in lower Manhattan. "Serra intended to elicit a connection between those walking through the space and their surroundings. Tilted Arc did just that, and perhaps too well." - Artnet

Scanning The Brains Of Jazz Guitarists To Find “Flow”

"Their level of experience ranged from novice to veteran, as quantified by the number of public performances they had given. The researchers placed electrode caps on their heads to record their EEG brain waves while they improvised to chord sequences and rhythms that were provided to them." - The Conversation

Alexei Navalny’s Autobiography Will Be Published Posthumously This Fall

"During the years leading up to his death in a Russian prison, the Russian opposition leader was writing a memoir about his life and work as a pro-democracy activist. Titled Patriot, the memoir will be published in the United States by Knopf on Oct. 22." - The New York Times

How Performing Artists Are Depicting Robots In The Age Of AI

"Since the release of ChatGPT in November 2022, signaling a mighty leap forward in robots’ and artificial intelligence’s ability to imitate human interaction, we’ve craved a new generation of art to help us understand our relationship to machines and what, if anything, distinguishes us from them." - San Francisco Chronicle (MSN)

Broadway Is Struggling. Nonprofit Off-Broadway Is Struggling. But Commercial Off-Broadway Is Having A Great Season.

"A small sector of New York’s theatrical economy and one that has for years been somewhere between difficult and dormant, is back in business." One key factor: location downtown. "There are several generations of potential audience members who will not go above 14th Street." - The New York Times

Performers Complain That Edinburgh Fringe Has Become Far Too Expensive To Take Part In

Even well-established comedians and other artists say that the costs, particularly for housing ("pure greed"), have soared to prohibitive levels, especially for those just starting out. Fringe officials say they're doing what they can to help. - BBC

NPR Editor Claims Network Has Entrenched Liberal Bias And Has “Lost America’s Trust”

"A lack of political diversity among staff and C-suite mandates has created a niche format that appeals mainly to far liberal-leaning listeners and only presents one side of important national and international stories. So says Uri Berliner, a senior business editor, and a 25-year NPR veteran." - Inside Radio

NPR’s Response(s) To Editor Uri Berliner’s Accusation Of Liberal Bias

The official response, from chief news executive Edith Chapin: "We're proud to stand behind the exceptional work that our desks and shows do. … (Yet) none of our work is above scrutiny or critique." Colleagues are reportedly furious that Berliner quoted private conversations. - NPR

Record Labels Are Pulling Music From TikTok. Congress Might Ban The App. So Now What For Music?

TikTok began life as Musical.ly, an app to film oneself lip-syncing to songs. Interacting with pop music was a core function of TikTok. Fans and artists shared music they loved, grafting it onto videos showing their lives and ideas. It was a lifeline to friends and culture during the pandemic. - Los Angeles Times (MSN)

Scientists Are Trying To Measure Our Emotional Reaction To Art

New scientific investigations into the embodied experience of viewing art point us toward more concrete answers, but also more questions. - Hyperallergic

Claim: YouTube Is The Most Consequential Technology In America

Maybe you don’t know that YouTube is also the most popular way to hear music and one of the country’s largest cable TV providers. YouTube is the healthiest economy on the internet. And it has been rocket fuel for artificial intelligence. - Washington Post

AI Companies Are Running Out Of Data

Ever more powerful systems developed by OpenAI, Google and others require larger oceans of information to learn from. That demand is straining the available pool of quality public data online at the same time that some data owners are blocking access to AI companies. - The Wall Street Journal

Meta Considered Buying Simon & Schuster To Train Its AI

According to the recordings, Ahmad Al-Dahle, Meta’s vice president of generative AI, told executives that the company had used almost every book, poem and essay written in English available on the internet to train models, so was looking for new sources of training material. - The Guardian

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