“Despite his ebullience, an aura of sorrow hovers over Eustis these days. The last eighteen months have been the most artistically and commercially successful of his ten years at the helm of the Public; but personally, it has been a time of terrible loss, including the deaths of his mother and stepfather.”
Tag: 02.24.16
Seriously? A “Museum Of Digital Reading”?
“The Museum of Digital Reading (in French, Le Petit Musée de la lecture numérique) will be the first permanent exhibition space in Europe dedicated to the history of reading devices.”
Who Owns The Past? Our Museums Seem To Be Confused
“The encroachment of liberal guilt into curatorial decisions is undermining the traditional purpose of the museum; a secular institution in the service of historical inquiry. It risks transforming our great institutions into places where understanding the past is conditioned by present-day political and therapeutic criteria. And yet it should be the role of a museum to open up the past to everyone.”
Glowing Brick Wall Or Mountain Of Ice Cubes? Here’s What This Summer’s Serpentine Pavilion Will Look Like
“In the hands of … Bjarke Ingels and his firm BIG, it won’t be any old brick wall. It’s a wall that will be stretched open and hollowed out, its oversized fibreglass bricks stacked up to form a paraboloid enclosure that will taper high above the park, transforming from a bulging cave to a slender screen as it undulates across the lawn.”
How Would We Even Know If Our Machines Achieved Consciousness?
“What if artificial intelligence is so unfamiliar that we have a hard time recognising it? Could our machines have become self-aware without our even knowing it? The huge obstacle to addressing such questions is that no one is really sure what consciousness is, let alone whether we’d know it if we saw it.”
Why Teens Have Stopped Reading Books
“When they become twelve or thirteen, kids often stop reading seriously. The boys veer off into sports or computer games, the girls into friendship in all its wrenching mysteries and satisfactions of favor and exclusion. Much of their social life, for boys as well as girls, is now conducted on smartphones, where teen-agers don’t have to confront one another.”
Why Composers Are Writing Music Across Styles
Of course not everyone is writing “in the style of” or explicitly quoting other pieces, but the desire to build perceptible bridges between musical traditions is nearly universal.
Is HBO Faltering?
“HBO is in a period of challenge. It hasn’t had a breakout drama hit since Game of Thrones launched in 2011, and in recent months, it has seen several troubled shows go expensively into and then out of production.”
Cincinnati Considers Robert Mapplethorpe, 25 Years After The Obscenity Trial
Even now, “the city has not fully recovered. … Some Cincinnatians see Mapplethorpe as a ‘liberating force’ that advanced the arts and tolerance in the city, while others view him as a kind of ‘blight’ that tainted Cincinnati’s reputation.”
Ruin Porn: Artist Moves Wrecked Detroit House To Europe
“The arguments around ruin porn have intensified as artists, particularly photographers, have flooded into Detroit while city champions struggle to counter negative publicity without overselling the nascent renaissance.”