Last summer, the game AI Dungeon (less than a year old at the time) got an upgraded version of AI text-generation software that lets users type an action or piece of dialogue for their characters and then creates a new piece of narrative. Before long, some users started creating sexual situations involving children. But when the company put in a content filter and said it would use human moderators for flagged content, users rebelled. – Wired
Philadelphia Museum Of Art Unveils New Gehry Addition
Nearly 20 years ago, Anne d’Harnoncourt, the museum’s then-director and CEO, proposed to Frank Gehry that he replicate the galvanizing effect of his Guggenheim Bilbao by digging beneath the museum. The idea did not strike the architect as peculiar. “I said, give me the problem,” recalls Gehry, now 92. “I’m ready.” – Architectural Record
Houston Symphony’s Music Director, Stranded In Europe By Pandemic, Misses Last Two Weeks Of Season
Andres Orozco-Estrada hasn’t been back to Texas to conduct his orchestra for a year, but he had been planning to return for concerts May 7-9 and May 14-16 to close his next-to-last season in Houston. (He’ll step down in the summer of 2022.) But the U.S. government’s National Interest Exemption on pandemic travel restrictions for certain artists expired in early March, exceptions are no longer being considered, and Orozco-Estrada learned at the last minute that he wouldn’t be allowed to enter the country. David Robertson is filling in for him. – Houston Chronicle
What’s Behind Attacks On Critical Race Theory?
“The exact targets of CRT’s critics vary wildly, but it is obvious that most critics simply do not know what they are talking about. Instead, CRT functions for the right today primarily as an empty signifier for any talk of race and racism at all, a catch-all specter lumping together “multiculturalism,” “wokeism,” “anti-racism,” and “identity politics”—or indeed any suggestion that racial inequities in the United States are anything but fair outcomes, the result of choices made by equally positioned individuals in a free society. They are simply against any talk, discussion, mention, analysis, or intimation of race—except to say we shouldn’t talk about it.” – Boston Review
Could New York Get A Really Good Penn Station?
Justin Davidson refuses to relinquish hope. “The MTA, Amtrak, and NJ Transit have jointly released not one but two possible visions for rebuilding the rest of the Dantesque complex. And, lo and behold, they are both aspirational and realistic. The design … amalgamates the jumble of bureaucratic fiefdoms, decades’ worth of duct-tape fixes, and a thicket of conflicting agendas into a rail hub that might one day be a thing of, if not quite beauty, at least satisfaction — maybe even pride.” – Curbed
Ross Douthat Sees Mediocrity Everywhere, Laments Paucity Of “Great Thinkers”
“My own favoured explanation, in The Decadent Society, is adapted from the American sociologist Robert Nisbet’s arguments about how cultural golden ages hold traditional and novel forces in creative tension: the problem for the Western world is that this tension snapped during the revolutions of the 1960s, when the baby boomers (and the pre-boomer innovators they followed) were too culturally triumphant and their elders put up too little resistance, such that the fruitful tension between innovation and tradition gave way to confusion, mediocrity, sterility.” – New Statesman
What It’s Like To Play The Violin Of Violins
The Sala Paganiniana, where Il Cannone resides inside the Palazzo Tursi, is monitored by scientists, experts, and bodyguards. The instrument is played monthly by curator Bruce Carlson and each year by the winner of the Premio Paganini contest for young violinists. – Strings
How To Think About Racist Statues That Have Been Taken Down
To date there are no large-scale programs or comprehensive models for dealing with defaced or removed monuments. However, the museum and heritage sectors — two professions that are founded on the essential notion of preservation — have been challenged by calls, largely from outside of these fields, suggesting that museums take in damaged or fallen monuments. – Hyperallergic
The Hucksterism Of Selling Culture In The 20th Century
Any given work—1984, say, or Bonnie and Clyde—isn’t much of anything until it becomes a counter in other people’s games. How much pure hucksterism is involved on the part of the cultural arbiters, as opposed to astute positioning of worthy work so that it will thrive in the market, can be hard to tell. – The Atlantic
A New York City Ballet Principal Writes About Returning To The Studio
Russell Janzen: “This [2’11” segment] is the longest I have danced with someone else in quite some time, and after running it in this first rehearsal I am winded. … [I’m] happy we’re back but disappointed by how impersonal it feels to dance masked. I had been anticipating that the return to this work would be emotional, precious, but with the quick clip of the excerpt we are dancing, and the fact of our masks, it feels unfamiliar, almost like we’re dancing next to each other but not with each other.” – The New York Times
UK Will Fast-Track Visas For Anyone Who’s Won An Oscar, Grammy, Golden Globe Etc.
The U.K. Home Office revealed on Wednesday that people who have won any of these awards will be able to skip the endorsements previously required as part of the Global Talent visa category — available to anyone in the fields of academia or research, arts and culture or digital technology — from Wednesday, May 5. – Variety
The Heated Battle Over ‘Hooked On Phonics’ (Yes, There Was One)
“As strangely ho-hum as Hooked on Phonics feels now, it was once a juggernaut in the educational space, selling hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of units each year. It promised something that seemed a little stunning to parents — the idea that, with a home program, students could learn how to read basically on their own by following a simple program. … Hooked on Phonics seemed like it had the golden seal of educational approval. There was just one problem. It didn’t, really. Much the opposite, in fact — educators couldn’t stop complaining about it.” – Tedium
Whoosh — Chicago Arts Scramble To Get Back In The Game
The city had most all of its nonprofit arts constituencies in line like eager petitioners: as soon as the mayor spoke, they hit “send” on their summer news releases. And let’s not forget the suburbs. Ravinia is returning, too! If you run an arts organization, you’re now worried about being lost in the shuffle. – Chicago Tribune (Yahoo!)
Getting Students To Seriously Wrestle With Cancel Culture And ‘Loving The Art But Hating The Artist’
“For 20 years now, … [since] Harvey Weinstein was still feared, Kanye West was still about the music, and museums exhibited portfolios of amoral behavior with impunity, [Eileen] Favorite has toiled in the cancel culture. … Since 2001, [the] Chicago-based novelist and literature professor has taught a class at [the School of the Art Institute of Chicago] titled ‘Love the Art, Hate the Artist.’ The university describes it as a course on the recurring question: ‘How do the biographical details of an artist’s life influence our attitude toward their work?’ But as one student said, ‘It’s really more like a course on how to be an artist and still be a good human.'” – Yahoo! (Chicago Tribune)
The Science Of Victimhood?
A study identifies a negative personality trait they call TIV or Tendency toward Interpersonal Victimhood. People who score high on a TIV test have an “enduring feeling that the self is a victim in different kinds of interpersonal relationships,” they write. – Nautilus
Daniel Libeskind To Redesign Pittsburgh’s Tree Of Life Synagogue, Site Of 2018 Shooting
“Libeskind, who designed the Jewish Museum in Berlin and the National Holocaust Monument in Ottawa, has experience responding to traumatic events through architecture. He also served as masterplan architect at New York’s World Trade Center site as the city looked to rebuild following 9/11.” – Artnet
Book Of Antoine De Saint-Exupéry’s Love Letters Marks End Of 18-Year Legal Battle Between His Heirs
The letters were between the French author of The Little Prince and his wife, a Salvadoran artist of whom his family sternly disapproved. The lengthy lawsuits were between his relatives and her heirs over rights to previous books about the couple’s courtship and marriage. – The Guardian
Britain’s NHS Tries Prescribing Song Playlists To Alzheimer’s Patients
“A test among people with dementia found an algorithm that ‘prescribes’ songs based on listeners’ personal backgrounds and tastes resulted in reductions in heart rate of up to 22%, lowering agitation and distress in some cases. … The technology operates as a musical ‘drip’, playing songs to patients and monitoring their heart rates as they listen.” – The Guardian
‘Sesame Street’ Was A Radical Experiment
“It’s easy to forget now, given the show’s 52-year ubiquity, that the original program was a shot in the dark – the first show aimed explicitly at childhood education, a combustible attempt to meld learning fundamentals with jingly bits and skits kids enjoyed to watch. … [It] became the longest-running, and arguably most recognizable children’s program in the country, with international co-productions assisted by the Sesame Workshop in 170 more.” – The Guardian
“Multitasking” Is A Lie
The American Psychological Association has reported that even brief mental blocks created by shifting between tasks can cost as much as 40% in productivity. Why is the cost of multitasking so high? Because our brains were never meant to multitask in the first place. – Fast Company
Celebrate Napoleon? Well, It Is His 200th Birthday…
This isn’t the first time that commemorating Napoleon or the events of his reign has posed a problem. In 2005, the then president of France, Jacques Chirac, and his prime minister, Dominique de Villepin – also a Napoleonic historian – thought it wise to sidestep the celebrations for the bicentenary of the French victory against the Austrians at Austerlitz. A key part of this decision, in commentators’ eyes, was mounting controversy about Napoleon’s legacy, including accusations of genocide against people in the colonies. – The Conversation
The World’s Longest-Running Play, Coming Back From Its First Closure In 69 Years
The producers of Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap in London’s West End have “employed two casts who will rehearse and work completely separately, and appear in alternating runs of three performances. If an actor were to test positive, the other cast – contracted to be available and in reach of the theatre in their time off – will immediately take over for 10 days while the other group recuperates. Quarantine rules would prevent the usual theatre practice of one absentee being replaced by a stand-in.” – The Guardian
UK Threatens To Cut Funds For University-Level Arts Education By 50%
“Under proposals put forward earlier this year by Gavin Williamson, the education secretary, funding from the Office for Students — the independent regulator of higher education — would be cut by half for students of art and design, music, dance, drama and performing arts, media studies and archaeology during the 2021-22 academic year.” – The Art Newspaper
Meet The Detective Who’s Recovered Half A Billion Dollars’ Worth of Stolen Art
“[Christopher] Marinello is one of a handful of people who track down stolen masterpieces for a living. Operating in the grey area between wealthy collectors, private investigators, and high-value thieves, he has spent three decades going after lost works by the likes of Warhol, Picasso and Van Gogh.” – The Guardian