Arts news

• The College Essays ChatGPT Wrote For Me To Submit To The Ivies

  12-09-2023 23:32 via nytimes.com
  
  “I used several free tools to generate short essays for some Ivy League applications. The A.I. chatbots’ answers have been edited for brevity and clarity.” – The New York Times
  
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• Seattle Arts Organizations Face Diminished Demand

  12-09-2023 23:01 via seattletimes.com
  
  According to the survey, overall ticket sales are still well below pre-pandemic levels: down 23% across various art forms and venues. People also tend to decide much more last-minute, venues say, and pay more for that flexibility. In total, subscriptions are down 38%. – Seattle Times
  
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• The New Doom Counter-Culture

  12-09-2023 22:32 via 3quarksdaily.com
  
  Where psychedelic experience was at the heart of the old counter culture, Bayesian reasoning seems to be at the heart of this counter culture. Where the old counter culture dreamed of a coming Aquarian Age of peace, love, and happiness, this one fears the destruction of humanity by a super-intelligent AI. – 3 Quarks Daily
  
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• How Alexei Ratmansky Became One Of The Most In-Demand Choreographers

  12-09-2023 22:01 via observer.com
  
  Because he makes ballets so quickly and in little bits, only at the very end of the process does it all come together. Sometimes he’s willing to take risks and even drag people along who aren’t fully on board—and then only at the end, they’re like, “Okay, now I get it.” – The Observer
  
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• In A City Of Monuments, How To Decolonize The Landscape

  12-09-2023 21:29 via newyorker.com
  
  How will cities grapple with the more difficult question of what to do with fraught landmarks that are more immovable than those statues—museums, train stations, and private houses, say—or whose connections to racism or slavery, while significant, are tougher to precisely trace? – The New Yorker
  
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• The US Military’s Long History With Drag (Which The Pentagon Has Now Banned)

  12-09-2023 21:05 via slate.com
  
  While soldier-led cross-dressing shows go as far back as the late 19th century, “drag in the military really took off during World War I and World War II when military leaders realized that it was a liability for their fighting men to be mired in conflict without any morale-boosting entertainment.” – Slate
  
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• AI Readers Of Audio Books Are Here. There Are Some Issues…

  12-09-2023 20:31 via theconversation.com
  
  If the listener is wholly unaware that the narrator is digital, this raises some of the many ethical questions (such as that of consent) that arise whenever users are unaware that they are interacting with an AI-driven technology, rather than with a person. – The Conversation
  
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• The Real-Life Man Who Was, And Was Not, Uncle Tom

  12-09-2023 20:02 via msn.com
  Harriet Beecher Stowe, in her 1853 book A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, wrote that the autobiography of Josiah Henson was one of her main inspirations. And who was Henson? Someone with a life story as compelling as those of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman. – MSN (The Atlantic)
  
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• If You Believe in Auguries . . .

  12-09-2023 19:59 via artsjournal.com
  . . . the double rainbow over New York
  
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• Battling AI’s Fight Over Whether Painting Is A Raphael

  12-09-2023 19:29 via theguardian.com
  
  Both studies used state-of-the art AI technology. Months after one study proclaimed that the so-called de Brécy Tondo, currently on display at Bradford council’s Cartwright Hall Art Gallery, is “undoubtedly” by Raphael, another has found that it cannot be by the Renaissance master. – The Guardian
  
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• What The Upcoming Broadway Revival Of Sondheim’s “Merrily We Roll Along” Has Done To Its Three Lead Actors

  12-09-2023 19:06 via nytimes.com
  
  Though the musical recounts, in reverse, the dissolution of a close personal and professional friendship, the work of re-creating the central characters has brought Daniel Radcliffe, Lindsay Mendez, and Jonathan Groff into a very tight (and platonic) relationship of their own. – The New York Times
  
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• Will AI Unlock Human Creativity For Millions?

  12-09-2023 18:29 via theguardian.com
  
   “I think we’re at a moment with the development of AI where we have ways to provide support, encouragement, affirmation, coaching and advice. We’ve basically taken emotional intelligence and distilled it. And I think that is going to unlock the creativity of millions and millions of people for whom that wasn’t available.” – The Guardian
  
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• A Stolen Van Gogh Is Returned, Hidden In A Pillowcase Inside An Ikea Bag

  12-09-2023 18:03 via bbc.com
  
  The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring (1884) was taken from the Singer Laren Museum near Amsterdam in March 2020. A culprit was convicted in 2021, but the painting had been passed on to an organized crime group. It was recently returned to the well-known Dutch art detective Arthur Brand. – BBC
  
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• We’re Listening To More Sad Music. Why?

  12-09-2023 17:32 via honest-broker.com
  
  We have an odd situation. The slow tune is no longer dreamy music for couples, but sad, lonely music for the isolated and depressed. It doesn’t help that handheld devices, earbuds, and other pervasive technologies have turned music into something consumed alone, not communally as it was in past. – The Honest Broker
  
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• The Last Remnant Of Radio Disney Is Sold Off

  12-09-2023 17:04 via insideradio.com
  “The last Walt Disney Co.-owned radio station is officially in the hands of Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa, which has closed on the $5 million purchase of KRDC Los Angeles (1110) and placed its religious teaching ‘K-Wave’ programming on the AM signal.” – Inside Radio
  
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• Big Panda author using proceeds to set up animal sanctuary in Swansea

  12-09-2023 17:00
  
  Exclusive: James Norbury says he is fulfilling pledge made after his debut book landed him a six-figure dealThe self-taught artist and writer James Norbury was living below the poverty line and volunteering with a cat charity when his self-published book was snapped up by a leading publisher in 2021.After repeated rejection by literary agents, a six-figure deal was all the more astonishing for him being a debut author and he vowed to invest money he earned in creating a sanctuary for animals. Co
  
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• ‘It was a little bit cursed’: how stolen Van Gogh was a ‘headache’ for the criminal world

  12-09-2023 16:43
  
  ‘Indiana Jones of art world’ traces lost artwork seized from museum during Covid lockdownIt was a masterpiece with a curse: an early Van Gogh worth €3m-€6m (£2.6m-£5.2m) stolen from a Dutch museum three years ago was being passed around the criminal world like a hot potato, according to art detective Arthur Brand.“We knew that the painting would go from one hand to another hand in the criminal world, but that nobody really wanted to touch it because it was
  
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• ‘A little bit cursed’: how stolen Van Gogh was a ‘headache’ for the criminal world

  12-09-2023 16:43
  
  ‘Indiana Jones of art world’ traces lost artwork seized from museum during Covid lockdownIt was a masterpiece with a curse: an early Van Gogh worth €3m-€6m (£2.6m-£5.2m) stolen from a Dutch museum three years ago was being passed around the criminal world like a hot potato, according to art detective Arthur Brand.“We knew that the painting would go from one hand to another hand in the criminal world, but that nobody really wanted to touch it because it was
  
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• ‘Whatever you want’: the film-maker who roamed Europe’s ports asking Black people to perform

  12-09-2023 16:35
  
  Poet and artist Julian Knox took his camera around the continent, filming people sing, dance, recite poetry – or refuse to do anything but sleep. As the lyrical results go on show, he explains his odysseyTo make his latest work, poet and film-maker Julian Knox went on quite a journey – literally. The artist, who styles his name as Julianknxx, visited nine European port cities – Lisbon, Hamburg, Berlin, Marseille, Antwerp, Barcelona, Rotterdam, Amsterdam and London – and i
  
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• ‘Whatever you want’: the film-maker who roamed Europe’s cities asking Black people to perform

  12-09-2023 16:35
  
  Poet and artist Julianknxx took his camera around the continent, filming people sing, dance, recite poetry – or refuse to do anything but sleep. As the lyrical results go on show, he explains his odysseyTo make his latest work, poet and film-maker Julian Knox went on quite a journey – literally. The artist, who styles his name as Julianknxx, visited nine European port cities – Lisbon, Hamburg, Berlin, Marseille, Antwerp, Barcelona, Rotterdam, Amsterdam and London – and in
  
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• ‘Whatever you offer, I’ll take’: the poet who crossed Europe filming Black experience

  12-09-2023 16:35
  
  Poet and artist Julianknxx took his camera around the continent, filming people sing, dance, recite poetry – or refuse to do anything but sleep. As the lyrical results go on show, he explains his odysseyTo make his latest work, poet and film-maker Julian Knox went on quite a journey – literally. The artist, who styles his name as Julianknxx, visited nine European cities – Lisbon, Hamburg, Berlin, Marseille, Antwerp, Barcelona, Rotterdam, Amsterdam and London – and in each
  
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• Metropolitan Opera Commissions A New Work About Ukrainian Children Abducted To Russia

  12-09-2023 16:31 via nytimes.com
  
  “The (opera), which will be written by the Ukrainian composer Maxim Kolomiiets, with a libretto by the American playwright George Brant, tells the story of a mother who makes a long and perilous trip to rescue her daughter, who is being held at a camp inside Crimea.” – The New York Times
  
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• Earthquake Leaves Much Of Medieval City of Marrakech In Ruins

  12-09-2023 16:05 via cnn.com
  
  “The Medina district dates back centuries and is enclosed by walls built of red sandstone. … Long sections are showing deep cracks and parts have crumbled. Many of the old buildings inside the Medina have been damaged and some have collapsed entirely.” – CNN
  
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• Cleveland Orchestra’s Franz Welser-Möst Has Had A Cancerous Tumor Removed

  12-09-2023 15:32 via apnews.com
  
  While he’s still scheduled to conduct the orchestra’s season opener on Sept. 28, he has cancelled all performances from late October through the end of 2023; he will undergo further treatment between conducting engagements for at least the first half of 2024. – AP
  
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• Michael Chabon, Ayelet Waldman, David Henry Hwang Sue OpenAI For Copyright Violation

  12-09-2023 15:06 via msn.com
  “A group of authors… have filed suit in federal court against OpenAI, alleging the company unfairly used their copyrighted works to teach its chatbots how to respond to written prompts.” – MSN (San Francisco Chronicle)
  
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• Philadelphia Orchestra Musicians Are Without A Contract As Management’s Offer Is Rejected

  12-09-2023 14:33 via msn.com
  “The orchestra members voted definitively Sunday to reject the Philadelphia Orchestra and Kimmel Center Inc.’s ‘best and final offer,’ which came after three full days of bargaining. Eighty-five of the musicians voted against the offer, and two abstained. None voted in favor.” – MSN (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
  
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• No, Streaming Doesn’t Cancel Everything

  12-09-2023 14:00 via nytimes.com
  
  Or even most things! Only things you care about. (Or so it seems.) – The New York Times
  
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• ‘I want it to hit people in the gut’: Chris Ofili on his epic, three-wall Grenfell fresco

  12-09-2023 06:00
  
  The artist has finally chosen to address the tragedy – with Requiem, a vast work depicting a flaming building, fleeing souls and an ocean of tears. He explains why he placed an artist who died at its centreIn May 2017 Chris Ofili was at a gathering on the Lido in Venice, following the opening of an exhibition, when he was told a young artist wanted to meet him. Ofili, 54, cuts a lean, muscular figure, but with more salt than pepper in his hair, he is feeling his years professionally. &ldqu
  
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• Nonprofit Arts Organizations: Sometimes, Old Trees Die, Too

  12-09-2023 02:01 via artsjournal.com
  With all the finger pointing and desperation, it’s important to remember that senescence changes everything, including your desperate nonprofit arts organization.
  Ginkgo trees
  This isn’t about trees.
  Did you know that ginkgo biloba trees can live to be 5,000 years old? After sifting through all the latest harangues, arguments, and blame pieces (including my own) about whose fault it is that major nonprofit arts organizations are closing and failing all over the place, a strange link
  
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