“Good art is good for people precisely because it is not fantasy but imagination. It breaks the grip of our own dull fantasy life and stirs us to the effort of true vision. Most of the time we fail to see the big wide real world at all because we are blinded by obsession, anxiety, envy, resentment, fear. We make a small personal world in which we remain enclosed. Great art is liberating, it enables us to see and take pleasure in what is not ourselves. Literature stirs and satisfies our curiosity, it interests us in other people and other scenes, and helps us to be tolerant and generous. Art is informative. And even mediocre art can tell us something, for instance about how other people live. But to say this is not to hold a utilitarian or didactic view of art. Art is larger than such narrow ideas.”
Tag: 07.17.18
Next Year’s Venice Biennale: May You Live In Interesting Times
About the title’s provenance as an aged curse with a note of wryness in it, curator Ralph Rugoff said, “In this case it turns out that there never was any such ‘ancient Chinese curse,’ despite the fact that Western politicians have made reference to it in speeches for over a hundred years. It is an ersatz cultural relic, another Occidental ‘Orientalism,’ and yet for all its fictional status it has had real rhetorical effects in significant public exchanges.
Toasters Are Your Gateway To Artificial Intelligence
Developers who train machine-learning algorithms have found that it often makes sense to build toasters rather than wonder-boxes. That might seem counterintuitive, because the AIs of Western science fiction tend to resemble C-3PO in Star Wars or WALL-E in the eponymous film – examples of artificial general intelligence (AGI), automata that can interact with the world like a human, and handle many different tasks. But many companies are invisibly – and successfully – using machine learning to achieve much more limited goals.
Cirque Du Soleil Is Working With Neuroscientists On Locating And Quantifying The Emotion Of Awe
“In exchange for free tickets to [the Cirque show] O and an upgrade to one of the VIP suites, [60 volunteers] agreed to be poked and prodded, and have their brain activity observed during a performance. Twice each night for five nights, Lab of Misfits techs” – yes, that’s the name of the neuroscience research firm – “wired six of us up with the headgear, and … they gave us iPads that prompted us throughout the show to answer questions about just how much awe and wonder we were feeling at that exact moment.”
Barnes Foundation Offers Tours Guided By — Anyone But Tour Guides
In a summer series called “Barnes Jawn(t)s” (referencing Philadelphia’s strange all-purpose noun), the museum is turning docent duties over to a bicycle transport advocate, an Indian classical dancer, a queer Latinx social worker, and a black female comic-book maven.
‘Hamilton’ Director Thomas Kail On How The Musical Has Gotten Young People Excited About American History
“We have students presenting their own material, and you’ll see a poem about Phillis Wheatley by a 17-year-old student, and you’ll see a song from Abigail Adams’s perspective. Neither of them are characters in our story, but for some reason they spark for those students. And that’s my hope, that this is just an ignition for something much larger. As a mediocre history major and the brother of a sixth-grade teacher, nothing would make me happier.”
In A Rio Favela, Ballet Classes As ‘Anesthetic’ And Aspirational Tool
An Afro-Brazilian phys-ed teacher keeps her free program running through funding cuts, building closures, negotiations with drug gangs, and the ever-present threat of violence, all to give her students discipline and a taste of things beyond the slums.
Laid-Off Educators Sue UK’s National Gallery To Be Compensated As Employees, Not Freelancers
A group of 27 lecturers, art historians, and artists who provided services for the museum’s education department (until they were made redundant last October) “say that they were paid through the National Gallery payroll, taxed at source and wore staff passes. ‘We were required to attend staff training and team meetings and received formal reviews of our work,’ they write.”
Chief Of Scotland’s Arts Funder Is Out After No-Good-Very-Bad-Year
“Janet Archer, the chief executive of Creative Scotland, has resigned from her post” – effective immediately (and with six months’ severance pay) – “after a turbulent six months following uproar in the cultural world over its long-term funding decisions.”
Car Company Makes Ad With Graffiti In Background. Does It Owe Artist Royalties?
These days, graffiti is having a renaissance and is used by fashion labels and major corporations in their ad campaigns. Rebranded as “aerosol art,” it has now become what it rarely was before: a marketable commodity. The law, however, is struggling to catch up with the change in taste and culture, especially when it comes to the issue of when graffiti — an ephemeral form of art — deserves the safeguards of a copyright.