Simon V.Z. Wood: “Searching for evidence that bad actors were weaponizing artificial intelligence for political gain, what I found instead was an emerging field of detection firms, government grantees, startups, academics, artists, and nonprofits that seemed to depend on one another to sustain interest in deepfakes. Call it the deepfake-industrial complex — or, perhaps, a solution in search of a problem. … The winners in this ecosystem of constant possible delusion are the people who exploit fears of deepfakes to create plausible deniability about real-life events.” – Columbia Journalism Review
Archaeologists Object To Plans For New Floor For The Colosseum
Experts including Rossella Rea, the former director of the Colosseum, have raised concerns about the project’s €15m ($18.2) price tag, and claimed that the new floor will obscure views of the Colosseum’s subterranean bowels. – The Art Newspaper
The Sounds Of Japan’s Ancient Music, Recorded More Than A Century Ago
“Let’s set the scene. It’s February 28, 1903, and 12 musicians from the Imperial Household Orchestra are seated in front of a gramophone horn in a Tokyo hotel room. The needle slowly lowers onto a spinning blank disc and the session begins. What follows is a recording of the sound of gagaku, the oldest continuously performed orchestral music in the world that had, till then, been the reserve of Japan’s imperial court for over a thousand years. This recital is the first ever to be committed to disc, a glimpse of the past captured with a machine from the future.” – Atlas Obscura
Dance With Prosthetic Limbs Is Getting More And More Creative
“Consider Belgian hip-hop artist Angelina Bruno. A star of the European dance circuit whose right arm was amputated at the forearm as a teenager, Bruno dances to The Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights” with a 3-D–printed arm in the video game Just Dance 2021. The arm (designed in collaboration with Anouk Wipprecht) is a gorgeously faceted spire that glows iridescently within a cyber-futuristic, TRON-like virtual environment.” – Dance Magazine
I Have A Prosthetic Leg. Dancing Has Transformed My Relationship With It.
Mickaella Dantas: “It took me a while to consider working with my prosthesis, since it has a limited range of flexibility. I struggled with resistance and balance, and was frustrated by the way the leg could fall off when I sweat. It causes daily soreness. I didn’t have the self-discipline at first to develop dance movement with it. But when I met the Portuguese choreographer Clara Andermatt in 2012, I knew that I no longer could make these excuses.” – Dance Magazine
Powell’s Books Union Protests Store’s Rehiring Practices
Under dispute is whether or not Powell’s is obliged to honor employees’ prior seniority, salaries, and benefits. The union says that the store, in a string of emails last year, had agreed to honor the employees’ work history upon rehiring. The store, on the other hand, asserts that, since more than 12 months have passed, they are under no such obligation, and has insisted that former employees reapply for their old jobs. – Publishers Weekly
New Research: Angkor Wat Population Was Greater Than Modern Boston
Researchers have determined the city’s population at its zenith in the 13th century, and the number is impressive: some 700,000 to 900,000 people likely called the Angkor region home, making it one of the world’s largest pre-modern cities. Compare that with the 2019 estimated population for Boston, at 692,600. – Artnet
World Dance? Seriously?
Typically, it’s an intermediary—a manager, a producer, a critic—who labels something as “world dance.” The term denotes exoticness, authenticity—and it sells. It’s also problematic and limiting. – Dance Magazine
The Point Of The Point Magazine
“As we see it, one of the goals of the magazine is to help our readers remain open to the possibility that facets of everyday life and culture they might be inclined to trivialize or look down upon may have something to teach us. This doesn’t mean we don’t allow criticism, of course; criticism is part of taking something seriously.” – LitHub
How To Grapple With An Artist’s Legacy When You’re Responsible For It?
As I’ve tried to make decisions about those areas of influence, I’ve found that I have to fight the “what would Michael have done” or “what would Michael want” voice. While it seems natural to say that my primary job is to listen to that voice, I’ve come to realize this rationale is not a legitimate way to make decisions. – American Theatre
A Musical About COVID, Titled ‘Breathe’
“Before we get to the logistics of writing, staging and filming a musical” — one with five songwriting teams, four directors plus a supervisor, a passel of actors, and creators Jodi Picoult and Timothy Allen McDonald — “in the midst of a pandemic, let’s address the elephant in the Zoom: Why would anyone want to watch a 90-minute theatrical production about COVID-19 — especially one with scenes named after symptoms many of us have experienced firsthand? (They are: Fever, Aches, Swelling & Irritation, Fatigue and Shortness of Breath.)” – The New York Times
Berlin Film Festival Will Get A Live Version This Year After All — Outdoors
“The Berlin Film Festival, which took place online earlier this year, will show most of the movies that were part of the competition at outdoor cinemas across the German capital next month, taking advantage of falling COVID-19 infection numbers. The summer special offered by the festival, also known as the Berlinale, will take place from June 9 to 20 at 16 venues including a specially created open-air cinema at Museum Island in the heart of the city.” – Reuters
Andrew Lloyd Webber Restores/Updates London’s Oldest Theatre, Built in 1663
In 2000, Lloyd Webber purchased the building, which he calls “objectively marvellous.” For the past two years, with Stephen Thurley’s help, he has been restoring it to its Georgian grandeur, a sixty-million-pound undertaking. There’d been some wear and tear since 1812. “The architecture had been greatly compromised,” Lloyd Webber said. – The New Yorker
‘Irreparable Damage’ — Scholars Protest Newark Museum’s Plan To Deaccession Artworks
“When the Newark Museum of Art announced a plan to sell 17 objects in March, it provided few details as to which artworks might appear on the auction block. But a gradual release of the specifics has enraged some historians, including previous employees of the museum, who described the sale as a misguided attempt to monetize some of the collection’s best examples of American art, including … [works by] Mary Cassatt, Georgia O’Keeffe, Thomas Eakins, and Marsden Hartley” as well as a particularly important work by Hudson River School painter Thomas Cole. – Artnet
More Trouble For Golden Globes As NBC Drops Broadcast
“NBC will not air the Golden Globes in 2022, the network said in a statement on Monday morning. This means the Hollywood Foreign Press Association will now have to decide how or if it will move forward next year without its broadcast partner, or more swiftly enact changes demanded by industry leaders regarding the org’s membership and processes.” – Variety
Architect Helmut Jahn, 81, Killed In Bicycle-Car Collision
He’s best-known for a series of major buildings in Chicago, including the Thompson Center, the Xerox Center (now 55 West Monroe), the addition to the Chicago Board of Trade, and the United Airlines Terminal at O’Hare Airport, as well as the Liberty Place towers in Philadelphia, the Sony Center in Berlin, and Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport. – CNN
Performance Venues And Museums In UK May Reopen Next Monday (Though Many Will Not)
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has announced the lifting of a series of pandemic-related restrictions as of May 17; the new measures include the reopening of theatres, cinemas, concert halls, museums, and similar venues. However, social distancing requirements and capacity limits will still be in place, and many theatres say they can’t afford to reopen to only half-full houses. – BBC
The Science Behind Your Ums… and Ahs…
Indeed, these verbal hesitations have been viewed as undesirable since the days of ancient Greece and, more recently, the American linguist Noam Chomsky characterised them as ‘errors’ irrelevant to language. But could there be more to these utterances than initially meets the ear? – Aeon
Spotify’s Imposter Problem
That new album by your fave, the one you haven’t heard hyped on social media or in music magazines? It’s probably by a deliberate Doppelgänger. “Inside Spotify’s borderless musical landscape, you’re never more than a playlist transition away from a fake-out. … There’s always someone trying to game the system.” – Slate
La Scala Is Opening Again
With a 500-person limit, a record high in private funding, new digital streaming infrastructure, and a mandate to be more ecologically conscious, the Milan opera house and its new artistic director, Dominique Meyer, are ready to put the horrible experience of 2020 behind them. – The New York Times