“Powered by an artificial intelligence text generator, the video game [AI Dungeon] can be played on smartphones or computers, offering players a choice of five genres: fantasy, mystery, apocalyptic, zombies, or cyberpunk. At the beginning of each game, the AI generates the first lines of a unique and genre-specific adventure — prompting players to type in their next actions. Players can type whatever they want, and the AI storyteller responds and adapts the adventure.” – Publishers Weekly
Tag: 08.28.20
What Will Happen When Our Brains Can Talk Directly To Computers?
Voice recognition, like that used by Apple’s Siri or Amazon’s Alexa, is a step toward more seamless integration of human and machine. The next step, one that scientists around the world are pursuing, is technology that allows people to control computers — and everything connected to them, including cars, robotic arms and drones — merely by thinking. – The New York Times
New Documentary Examines $60 Million Art Fraud
For 15 years, Knoedler had procured and sold at least 40 fraudulent paintings – an astounding $60m of forged work attributed to such modern American masters as Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock and Robert Motherwell. It was, according to Driven to Abstraction, a new documentary on the scandal, “the greatest forgery hoax ever of modern American art”. – The Guardian
How Choruses Are Figuring Out How To Sing Together
There are few answers about this disease. But the choral community has come together to figure out how 54 million people in America who sing in a chorus can do so safely. Choral leaders have developed software for online singing and created virtual choirs. Companies are inventing face masks that can be worn for singing. Several universities, including the University of Cincinnati, are conducting studies on the spread of aerosols while singing or playing instruments, and how it can be mitigated. – Cincinnati Business Journal
Discovery: US Teen Wrote 20,000 Wikipedia Entries In a Language They Don’t Speak
Alongside Gaelic, Scots is one of the indigenous languages of Scotland. The thousands of Wikipedia entries written in it make up one of the largest collections of the Scots language you can access online for free. The problem is an American teenager from North Carolina — who can’t speak the language — wrote 49 percent of all the entries. – Engadget
Why Americans Are Such Terrible Writers
If your children are in secondary school and are not writing essays, they are being swindled of their chance to do well in college. If you are a college student who is rarely required to submit a paper, you are being cheated of your chance to do well in life. – Intellectual Takeout
She Said She Would Write The Essay Herself
On reading, and really feeling, Virginia Woolf as a middle-aged writer. – LitHub
The Coming Coronavirus Changes To Museum Architecture
Some ideas: “Study the chokepoints, bottlenecks, and pinch points that museums share—such as the entrances, queuing zones, and access area for exhibits. … Look at ways that all food may be consumed outdoors, which works for museums with the right environmental conditions. Similarly, those cultural venues may have opportunities for outdoor temporary exhibitions, if their artworks and exhibits can be properly protected.” But that’s all with the hope that this will be temporary. With a vaccine, and in a few years, we’ll know more. – American Alliance of Museums
Banksy Funded (And Painted, Using A Fire Extinguisher) A Refugee Rescue Boat
The boat ran into trouble over the weekend – every refugee aboard was rescued by another boat – because it was overloaded, but: “Named after Louise Michel, the 19th century French feminist and anarchist, the boat features elements of Banksy’s idiosyncratic visual language.” The refugees await what’s known as “a Port of Safety,” in official terms. – Hyperallergic
Boston Center For The Arts Pushes Back Artist Evictions To 2022
OK, so, the Center for the Arts’ “Studio 551 initiative was conceived to create opportunities for visual and performing artists in an increasingly expensive city, offering a range of temporary residencies lasting six months to six years.” Sounds good, right? But: “To make way for the program, the organization initially planned to issue evictions by May 2020 for the 40 or so artists with long-term leases.” Sure, the evictions are delayed (again), but … what? – The Boston Globe