Tag: 04.13.18

A Half-Century Of Choreography For Lar Lubovitch

He saw a dance performance by chance in his freshman year at the University of Iowa. He “was lucky to discover dance when he did, in the early 1960s — the tail end of the heroic age of American modern dance. The summer after his freshman year (1962), he headed to the American Dance Festival ‘to find out what dance was.’ His first class there was taught by Martha Graham; the second, by Alvin Ailey; and the third by José Limón.”

If We’re Going To Have Truly Intelligent AIs, They’ll Have To Think *And* Feel

Thinking isn’t everything, or rather, it isn’t actually divorced from feeling. “Part of being intelligent is about the ability to function autonomously in various conditions and environments. Emotion is helpful here because it allows an agent to piece together the most significant kinds of information. For example, emotion can instil a sense of urgency in actions and decisions.”

Rex Harrison Was Terrified Of Failing, And Almost Didn’t Open ‘My Fair Lady’

This isn’t a new story, but it’s a darn good one. “Word of the performance’s cancellation, which had been broadcast on the radio, was rescinded, and crowds started forming at the theater: Yale students, local fans and trainloads of theater folk from Manhattan. Meanwhile, Mr. Adler and another assistant stage manager crisscrossed New Haven, rounding up the actors from Kaysey’s (a theater hangout) and the nearby Taft Hotel, where most of the cast was housed.”

Helen Mayer Harrison, Who Was A Leader In The Focus On Eco-Art, Has Died At 90

Harrison, who with her husband Newton formed the art duo The Harrisons, created work that was “unconventional, to say the least, pushing the very boundaries of what constitutes art. They made topsoil and grew crops in it. They consulted on urban planning projects in Baltimore, Europe and elsewhere. Well before global warming was in the public consciousness, they considered its likely effects through maps and other means. And then there was ‘Hog Pasture,’ one of their earliest works. … They made an actual pasture indoors, with hopes of having a real hog root around in it.”

If We Want Robots To Have Real Cognition, They’ll Have To Feel As Well As Think

“In the quest to create intelligent robots, designers tend to focus on purely rational, cognitive capacities. It’s tempting to disregard emotion entirely, or include only as much as necessary. But without emotion to help determine the personal significance of objects and actions, I doubt that true intelligence can exist – not the kind that beats human opponents at chess or the game of Go, but the sort of smarts that we humans recognise as such. Although we can refer to certain behaviours as either ’emotional’ or ‘cognitive’, this is really a linguistic short-cut. The two can’t be teased apart.”

Story Of Four Knuckleheads Who Stole Rare Books From College Library Is Now A Hollywood Action-Comedy

“I wouldn’t know personally, but smoking weed sometimes gives people great bad ideas. In the case of four college freshmen in Kentucky, the idea was to steal upwards of $11 million dollars in rare folios of John James Audubon’s classic bird illustrations and writing.” And they didn’t even manage that, as Peter Clark recounts: the folios were too heavy to escape with, and they got caught with other books they did steal – thanks to the badass librarians they made the mistake of tangling with. This epic tale of epic fail is on the way to the big screen, under the title American Animals.

After Brief And Embattled Tenure, Director Of Berlin’s Volksbühne Theater Resigns

“Following intensive protests against the decision to install Chris Dercon as director of Berlin’s radical theater with a strong left-wing tradition, the former head of London’s Tate Modern has decided to call it quits. … ‘Both parties have agreed that Chris Dercon’s appointment has not worked out as hoped, and the Volksbühne promptly needs a fresh start,’ stated Berlin public radio station, RBB, when first reporting the news.”