Author: Douglas McLennan

£2.3 Million Funding For Using Dance To Improve Health

“Previous Aesop research showed how the Dance to Health programmes could address a problem that costs the NHS £2.3bn a year, as the rates of completion for dance-based alternatives to NHS exercise courses are 55% higher. An evaluation of the Dance to Health pilot programme in February 2017 also concluded that dance artists could be trained to deliver classes which were an enjoyable artistic challenge, faithful to healthcare objectives, and would deliver measurable reductions in loneliness for participants.”

Writers’ Union Of Canada In Disarray After Controversial Editorial On Cultural Appropriation

Write Magazine editor Hal Niedzviecki wrote that CanLit was “exhaustingly white and middle-class” because its producers are generally so and people tend to write what they know. “I say: Write what you don’t know. Get outside your own head. Relentlessly explore the lives of people who aren’t like you … Win the Appropriation Prize.” Some people were enraged, and the fallout was swift: WUC issued an apology, a board member resigned, TWUC’s Equity Task Force issued a list of demands – and Mr. Niedzviecki left his position.

How Shakespeare Sucks Up All The Oxygen

“New theories about the extent of Shakespeare’s collaborative work appear to chip away at the solitary-genius monolith, but in fact they gain their intellectual and institutional traction from our very investment in that monolith. Adaptations similarly reinforce Shakespeare’s dominance even as they attempt to overwrite his social and linguistic conventions.”

Writers Used To Be Private, Reclusive Even. Now They’re Expected To Be Public, And That’s A Problem

“We used to be okay with literary types asserting independent, fortified egos. Poets and novelists were almost expected to be aloof, even anti-social. But today, we’re too savvy to indulge such a romantic myth. The aloof rebel is nothing more than an affectation, we tell ourselves, a pair of Ray-Bans you slip on. When Bob Dylan was slow to acknowledge his Nobel Prize for Literature, many were scandalized. “It’s impolite and arrogant,” huffed a member of the Swedish Academy. What, then, has displaced the idiosyncratic recluse?”

What Happens When Computers Get “Better” At Great Art Than Artists?

“If art is defined by human emotions,  what might happen once external algorithms are able to understand and manipulate human emotions better than Shakespeare, Picasso or Lennon? After all, emotions are not some mystical phenomenon — they are a biochemical process. Hence, given enough biometric data and enough computing power, it might be possible to hack love, hate, boredom and joy.”

Dueling High-End Auctions Reveal A Fascinating Battle Over Pricing Art

“The Spiegels, who died eight years ago, left their art to their two daughters, who each received half of its estimated value. For this month’s auctions, one chose Christie’s and the other, Sotheby’s—though not without intrigue within the houses themselves. The companies expect the works could sell for more than $160 million, the two largest art consignments of the bellwether spring auction season. The dueling auctions on May 17 and May 18 illustrate the challenges of valuing estates involving art, as well as the hard edges and personal animus underpinning what might seem a genteel business.”