“Authorities arrested five Palestinian antiquities dealers in Jerusalem and confiscated items dating back thousands of years from their homes and shops: papyrus fragments from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the bust of an Etruscan woman, a fresco from Pompeii depicting swimming fish. They also seized more modern objects – two black luxury Audi vehicles – and more than $200,000 in cash.”
Artificial Intelligence Program Made Paintings People Liked Better Than The Ones At Art Basel
Researchers at Rutgers University’s Art and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory not only created the software, “[they] showed the generated artworks to a pool of 18 people to judge, mixed with 50 images of real paintings – half by famous Abstract Expressionists and half shown at Art Basel 2016.” Not only did the panel prefer the AI paintings, they thought that many of the Art Basel works had been created by the computer. (As Claire Voon puts it, “zombie formalism is real.”)
Many Thought The Internet Would Liberate Thinking And Make Us Smart. It Didn’t
“In the 1990s, David Gelernter predicted that the internet would be a perfect environment for thinking, both serene and lively. “My idea in Mirror Worlds was that the computer screen should be like the still surface of a moving pond,” he explained. That didn’t happen. The internet gives us the news and assists our research, but it is mostly used for low purposes, a glorified fidget spinner, trolling device, and masturbation aid.”
Starry Night, Maze, Flying Toasters – Remembers Screen Savers?
“Even when we chose them, personalized them, they were just there – artworks that we rarely thought of as art, partly because we never knew the names of the artists who had made them. The best examples of the genre underscored this sentiment by pushing back against the fact of conscious human design.” Jacob Brogan offers a history of screen savers and an explanation (for you young’uns) of why they were necessary and why we now so rarely see them.
Philadelphia’s Dance Scene Is Totally Underrated, Says Dance Magazine
“You know Philadanco and Pennsylvania Ballet. But other than those staples, you may not think of Philadelphia as a huge dance hub. We’re here to prove that Philly is filled with underrated dance talent – and these six companies are just the start.”
After Five Years, What’s Next for Crystal Bridges Museum?
“Founded by Walmart heiress Alice Walton, currently the wealthiest woman in the United States, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art opened its doors in 2011, but despite a commendable five-year record of accomplishment, it remains a perplexing outlier among the country’s well-endowed art museums – and not just because, like Walton, it grew up in Northwest Arkansas.”
Do Arts Degrees Matter When It Comes To Artistic (Or Career) Success?
“A study from 2016 assesses the odds of artistic longevity through the prism of academia: does a formal education enhance one’s chances of making it (and staying) in the arts? Using data gathered by Statistics Denmark, “Artistic education matters: survival in the arts occupations” analyzes more than 27,000 employment records between 1996 and 2012 across five categories of Danish artists: visual artists, choreographers and dancers, composers and musicians, film/stage actors and directors, and writers (including journalists).”
Troubled Stream: Pandora On The Decline?
“The company said it ended the second quarter with 76 million active listeners who accounted for 5.22 billion listening hours in the quarter, down from 5.66 billion hours in the year-ago quarter. The company lost $275 million in the quarter compared to a $76 million loss the same quarter last year.”
What Is Your Purpose? (The Universe Doesn’t Care)
“Take a moment to think about the mythologies informing your purpose. I’ll reflect on mine, too. The universe, however, won’t. And that might be the most meaningful distinction of all.”
Jerry Saltz: The Art World Needs A Shakeup
“I love the art world; great art is getting made and shown. Art will live, as always. But we all have to admit that the art world isn’t the definition of radical right now. There’s still too much inbred art about itself or otherwise so specialized that it takes reams of explaining in almost unreadable texts just to say why it’s relevant at all — and those things that might feel relevant, or radical, in another context often get so buffered and wrapped in the wealth of the system — fancy museums, big biennials — that they cease to offer anything truly new-seeming.”
Why Shouldn’t Small Museums Be Able To Sell Art To Finance Their Survival?
“It’s an ideologically pure, dependably crowd-pleasing position to take. Its naiveté also makes me want to start throwing large objects long distances out high windows.”
HBO Confirms It Was Hacked; Hackers Say They’re Posting Unseen Shows To The Web
Hackers claimed to have obtained 1.5 terabytes of data from the company. So far, an upcoming episode of Ballers and Room 104 have apparently been put online. There is also written material that’s allegedly from next week’s fourth episode of Game of Thrones. More is promised to be “coming soon.”
USC Study: Hollywood’s Huge Gender Imbalance, In Numbers
“At USC’s Viterbi School of Engineering Signal Analysis and Interpretation Lab (SAIL), Shrikanth Narayanan, the Niki and C.L. Max Nikias Chair in Engineering, and a team of researchers used automated software to analyze the sophistication of language and character interaction in nearly 1,000 scripts, poring over 53,000 dialogues between 7,000 characters. What they found was a whole lot of men — 4,900 male characters to 2,000 female characters — doing a whole lot of talking — men participated in 37,000, the women got only 15,000.”
Police Seize 2,300-Year-Old Greek Vase From Met Museum
“For decades it was proudly displayed in the Greco-Roman galleries of the Metropolitan Museum of Art … Today it sits in an evidence room at the district attorney’s office in Manhattan after prosecutors quietly seized the antiquity last week based on evidence that it had been looted by tomb raiders in Italy in the 1970s.”
Philippe Jordan Named Music Director Of Vienna State Opera, One Of The Toughest Jobs In The Business
“Mr. Jordan, 42, a well-respected, charismatic second-generation conductor who is music director of the Paris Opera and the Vienna Symphony, will succeed Franz Welser-Möst, who abruptly resigned in 2014. Mr. Welser-Möst was the most recent in a long line of eminent musicians who left the post early, whether by choice or not – a roster that includes Mahler, Richard Strauss and Herbert von Karajan.”
Italian Cities Are Banning Everything Clueless Tourists Like To Do
Milan has just banned bottles, cans, food trucks, and selfie sticks in one of its most popular neighborhoods; Florence now forbids sandwiches or picnicking in its cathedral square; Rome will tolerate no toe-dipping in or eating near its historic fountains or drinking outdoors after dark; several cities are trying to chase kebab vendors out. Why? As Feargus O’Sullivan reports, the laws are “part of a larger nationwide struggle over the future of Italy’s urban centers – not just clamping down on trash and petty crime but also attempting to control who does and doesn’t have rights of access to key parts of the city.”
Misty Copeland Lands Another Big Endorsement Deal (And She’s Not The Only Ballet Star Doing It)
“The ballet world took notice on Monday when Estée Lauder announced that the public face of one of its fragrances would be Misty Copeland, the American Ballet Theater star. … [And] just last week Tiffany & Co. announced that it would feature another Ballet Theater star, David Hallberg, in its fall advertising campaign.”
68-Year-Old Writer Files Age Discrimination Complaint Against Iowa Writers’ Workshop
Workshop officials deny that age is used as a factor in the consideration of any application, according to the university’s emailed responses to Thomson. All applicants, instead, are evaluated based on their writing samples. Dan Thomson, however, maintains that application statistics collected by the university show that, over the past five years, none of the 105 applicants age 51 or older were accepted into the workshop’s fiction program. Nearly half of the 135 fiction students accepted from 2013 to 2017 were between the ages of 18 and 25.
Top Posts From AJBlogs 07.31.17
Kurt Weill in 2017
“Wherever I found decency and humanity in the world, it reminded me of America.” That this observation – recorded by Kurt Weill in 1947 – rings hollow in 2017 does not diminish the fascination … read more
AJBlog: Unanswered Question Published 2017-07-30
The NYC Influence
Over time, various cities emerge as strongholds of finance: Venice, Zurich, Edinburgh, Singapore, Hong Kong. These cities, though they have many other characteristics, have been known for taking a leadership role at some point in … read more
AJBlog: Infinite Curves Published 2017-07-31
Not too long, please
Back when I lived in a snug one-bedroom apartment not far from Central Park, I used to get my hair cut at Antonio’s, an unpretentious three-chair neighborhood barbershop with a Spanish-speaking staff and clientele. I … read more
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2017-07-31
Former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler On Net Neutrality, Monopolies And The Need For Regulation
“If the reality is that somewhere between 50% and 75% of all households in America have one or fewer choices for high-speed broadband–defined as 25 megabits per second–and 95% of all households in America have one or fewer choices for 100-mbps service, there is no competition. And when there is no competition, who makes the rules? The rules are made by the monopolists. So the job of the FCC should be to stand up and protect consumers and promote competition and innovation in a non-competitive market.”
Facial Recognition Software Eliminates Anonymity. Now The Battles For Privacy Regulations
“Facial recognition’s use is increasing. Retailers employ it to identify shoplifters, and bankers want to use it to secure bank accounts at ATMs. The Internet of things—connecting thousands of everyday personal objects from light bulbs to cars—may use an individual’s face to allow access to household devices. Churches already use facial recognition to track attendance at services.”
Laura Zucker Exit Interview: Three Biggest Challenges For The Arts
Laura Zucker is stepping down after 25 years leading the LA County Arts Commision. Three of the biggest issues facing arts administrators? “Ensuring all students everywhere receive a quality arts education. It’s a social justice issue. Valuing diverse cultural traditions equally, really equally, in terms of opportunity and resources. The democratization of culture: creating opportunities for the arts to be accessed by everyone, like breathing.”
Playwright Sam Shepard, 73
One of the most important and influential early writers in the Off Broadway movement, Mr. Shepard captured and chronicled the darker sides of American family life in plays like “Buried Child,” which won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1979, and “Curse of the Starving Class” and “A Lie of the Mind.”
A Brief History Of Populism (And How The Word Got Corrupted)
“The problem isn’t just using the word populist as a euphemism for racism and ethnic chauvinism. The term also helps to reproduce the very ideology that has trapped white working-class people by reinforcing the idea that they are not supposed to experience the same social and economic problems as everyone else.”
The Country’s First Sri Lankan Museum Is In The Basement Of A Sri Lankan Restaurant On Staten Island
And it was started, and is run, by and 18-year-old. Julia Wijesinghe says, “My friends ask me, ‘You’re from New York, why do you have so much pride for your parents’ country?’ I have one-hundred-per-cent New York pride, too. I got inspiration for my museum from going to MoMA.”