Tate boss Sir Nicholas Serota responded with disbelief to presenter Sue MacGregor when she told him of ACE’s plans to introduce Quality Metrics to measure artistic quality and said “the Arts Council is going to say if it doesn’t tick these boxes we’re not going to give money to it.” Serota responded: “I suspect you caricature the decision”, which MacGregor denied, saying: “No, I’m almost quoting it word for word from the press release.”
Author: Douglas McLennan
Coding Is Not “Fun.” It’s An Expression Of Values And Ethics
“The machine does what you say, not what you mean. More and more ‘decisions’ are being entrusted to software, including life-or-death ones: think self-driving cars; think semi-autonomous weapons; think Facebook and Google making inferences about your marital, psychological or physical status, before selling it to the highest bidder. Yet it’s rarely in the interests of companies and governments to encourage us to probe what’s going on beneath these processes.”
The Phone Call, R.I.P.
“The phone call always was an invasive form of communication, so perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that as soon as a plausible substitute presented itself we grabbed it.”
Battle Bots: Wikipedia Bots Keep Editing And Re-Editing Each Other In Dance Of Futility
“Wikipedia editors sometimes use bots to help them keep on top of changes that users have made to the online encyclopedia. But when two editors task different bots with making incompatible edits, each bot will keep finding that its work has been undone.”
Arts And Technology – A Natural Complement (Until They Go To War)
“It was the assertion of the Romantic movement that art makes us appreciate the beauty, richness and sheer size of the world. And technology, used appropriately, brings us closer to that sublime… Even if that was true in 1939, it’s not true now: not now our drones do our flying for us; not now our technology has got away from us to the point where large portions of nature are being erased; not now we live mired in media and, indeed, have to make special efforts to escape it.”
Communication Isn’t Just About Efficiency. Theatre, For Example…
“Life is both ever-various and surprising, and, at the same time, one long uninterrupted (and, admit it, sometimes awfully boring) conversation with ourselves.”
Hollywood Worries About A Netflix Monopoly (And It Should)
The streaming pioneer is spending $6 billion a year on making shows. “Out of the blue Netflix comes into the market and says, ‘We’re going to give you a number [to license a network show],’ ” says one television agent. “For the studios, it was, ‘Holy shit. Do we even need a cable sale?’ They all got addicted to crack. Nobody really thought they’d be a competitor on the originals market. They used stuff from the studios and became important. Now you see the backlash.”
Fifty Prominent Museum Directors Sign Letter Supporting North Dakota Indian Treaty Rights
“The letter was initiated by the Natural History Museum, a project of the New York-based art collective Not An Alternative, which has sought to politicize science and natural history museums around issues of climate change.”
How Greg Tate’s Criticism Showed Me Being A Critic Could Be Art
Jazz critic Tate’s essays for the Village Voice were poetry. “For a generation of critics, Tate’s career has served as a reminder that diversity isn’t just about a splash of color in the group photo; it’s about the different ways that people see, feel, and move within the world. These differences can be imperceptible, depending on where your eye lingers as you scan the newsroom.”
Some Rules For Brainstorming From Some Experts (If You Want To Accomplish Anything)
“We invited 50 leaders in the design community—typically some of the most opinionated, creative, and analytical types in business—to share how or if they brainstorm. Here are some of their responses, including a characteristically honest one from the legendary and outspoken creative director George Lois.”