Tag: 08.03.20

Met Museum Ends Free Internships – Now They’ll All Be Paid

The museum says that as a result of Adrienne Arsht’s gift, it is now the single biggest art museum in the US to offer 100% paid internships to nearly 120 undergraduate and graduate interns each year, widening access for students who cannot afford to work without compensation. It says that the internships enable interns to learn about museum practice in over 40 department areas. – The Art Newspaper

God, What A Treat To See Live Dance Again, Writes New York Times Critic

Gia Kourlas: “It didn’t bode well that the first live dance I was going to see since mid-March was one I had seen many times before. Sunshine, a Larry Keigwin war horse set to the Bill Withers classic ‘Ain’t No Sunshine,’ can give a dancer the opportunity to really feel the music in all the worst ways. It’s treacly stuff. So I’m happy to say that as soon as Melvin Lawovi began to move, my chest tightened; I even sensed — the horror — some tears.” – The New York Times

A COVID Face Mask That Can Translate Eight Languages And Take Dictation

“In conjunction with an app, the C-Face Smart mask can transcribe dictation, amplify the wearer’s voice, and translate speech … between Japanese and Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Indonesian, English, Spanish and French.” Naturally, it was the Japanese who dreamed up and developed it; the company that makes it is called Donut Robotics. – CNN

Notre-Dame’s Organ Is Being Taken Apart Piece By Piece To Get The Lead Out

Miraculously, the enormous instrument suffered no structural damage from the April 15, 2019 fire at the medieval Paris cathedral. But the 8,000 pipes, five keyboards, and intricate mechanisms were covered and filled with toxic lead dust from the destroyed roof and spire. Disassembly will take until the end of this year and the cleaning will take more than three years; after the organ is all back together, it will take six months to tune and voice it. – Yahoo! (AP)

Another Selfie-Greedy Tourist Breaks Another Artwork

“This time, the victim was a historic plaster model by the Italian artist Antonio Canova (1757–1822). On July 31, a misguided Austrian tourist snapped the toes off the Neoclassical sculpture Pauline Bonaparte as Venus Victrix, housed at [the town of] Possagno’s Museo Antonio Canova in northeast Italy, while attempting to sit on its lap for a photo.” – Artnet

Is Standup Comedy Theatre?

Standup comedy is not created purely by the performer, but as a collaborative production between the performer, the audience, the venue and the promoter. In the same way a theatre is arranged to support dramatic performance or a gallery is lit to display paintings, so too must a standup comedy gig be presented in such a way that it contextualises the performance to come – the iconic image of the single microphone on a stand in a spotlight is evocative of standup comedy without anything needing to be said. – The Conversation

YouTube – Designed To Addict (But To What?)

The burning question, at this point, is whether this recommender system can reliably lead users down epistemically problematic rabbit holes. In other words, is it possible to discern a pattern in YouTube’s AutoPlay system that takes users from ABBA to lizard people? This becomes especially significant when you consider that 70% of all watch-time spent on YouTube is due to videos suggested by the recommender system. – 3 Quarks Daily

Should Unions Be Compulsory?

Given the degree to which workers lack autonomy and are at the mercy of arbitrary and capricious decisions by their employer, republican liberty is at risk when it comes to the employer-employee relationship. Without a union, employees are subject to all kinds of arbitrary treatment. With a union, employees have some protection against this. – Aeon