When marketers and technologists think about the applications for artificial intelligence, it’s common to think along the lines of data processing, GPS route-finding, and logistics efficiency. But as artists and creatives embrace the technology, new possibilities are presenting themselves in the forms of creative direction, visual design, and song creation. – CMO
Tag: 02.20.19
Is The Optimization Culture Killing Us?
As employees in a hyperproductive, work-obsessed world, we’ve become acutely aware of any opportunity for optimization. Attempts by companies like Google or Freshly to create services that save you time misfire, as millennials see them not as services that will give them more time to relax, but as services that will increase the amount of time they’re available to work. – Medium
The Long, Not Exactly Uplifting History Of African American Dancers Getting Cast In Ballets
Basically, ballet companies wanted only Black women who were very light-skinned and who, especially in whiteface makeup, could pass for white (especially in the South). – JSTOR
Ranking All 52 Movies Nominated For An Oscar
Why not? From the 52nd – which, whew, sounds terrible – to a Marvel movie that “felt like a cog” to the top “thrilling and hilarious and sad and dishy” film, here’s everything nominated for anything this year. – Slate
Using The Oxford Comma Makes You A Hotter Prospect On Tinder
“On an internet occupied by as many finger-wagging ‘grammar Nazis’ as slovenly texters who prefer emoji to verbal displays of emotion, the Oxford comma has become a cause célèbre. This is especially true on dating apps, where many users have deemed the punctuation mark something they ‘can’t live without’ — a designation that’s put it in the same lofty category as cheese, the beach, and Game of Thrones.” – GQ
What Does The Jussie Smollett Saga Reveal About 2019 America? Victimhood Chic
John McWhorter: “Smollett doesn’t need the money he would get from a court settlement, and he isn’t trying to deny someone higher office. So why in the world would he fake something like that attack — if he did indeed fake it? The reason might be that he has come of age in an era when nothing he could have done or said would have made him look more interesting than being attacked on the basis of his color and sexual orientation.” – The Atlantic
Reasons To Care About The Bauhaus 100 Years On
“If you like airy, light-filled buildings, functional furniture, elegant, affordable design, sans-serif typography and clean-lined graphic design, you care about the Bauhaus. Equally, if you hate boxy, flat-roofed buildings, relentless standardization, the death of curves, ornament, the ironing out of cultural differences and overly rational planning, you care about the Bauhaus.” – Washington Post
Cultural Objects Versus Immigrants – A Disconnect
“Since the independence of West African countries throughout the late 1950s and early ’60s, the retention of objects and the simultaneous rejection of people has become ever more fraught. Young undocumented migrants from former French colonies stand metres away from the Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, a museum in Paris full of their inaccessible patrimony. The migrants are treated with contempt while the objects from their homelands are cared for in museums and treated with great reverence. The migrants will be deported but the objects will not be repatriated. The homeland is therefore only home to objects, not people.” – Aeon
Sofia Coppola Is An Auteur, And It’s Time We Give Her An Auteur’s Respect
J. Hoberman: “Coppola is a true auteur — a filmmaker with a distinct worldview and sensibility and a personal set of quasi-autobiographical interests. … [And] it should be noted that on the basis of six features she’s directed since 1999, she’s also the most celebrated American filmmaker under 50.” – The New York Times
A Bilingual ‘Romeo And Juliet’ — In English And American Sign Language
In a new production at ACT in Seattle, Juliet will speak English while Romeo will sign. (Interpreters will translate other roles’ lines into ASL.) In a process involving several steps, Shakespeare’s text has been converted into ASL poetry, “a distinct, dramatic form of sign-language storytelling … [that] uses gestures and facial expressions to evoke such poetic conventions as repetition, rhyme, alliteration, rhythm and meter.” – The Seattle Times