“Although it wasn’t a total surprise — the full-time faculty was expected to shrink in proportion to budget cuts, a shrinking student body, and as part of the school’s ongoing integration into George Washington University (GW) — no one expected this many beloved professors to lose their jobs. Of the school’s 19 full-time faculty who taught last semester, only 9 will be back to teach in the fall.”
Author: Douglas McLennan
Can Computers Help Us Understand Art Better?
“A new field of research aims to deepen, and even quantify, our understanding of this intangible quality. Inherently interdisciplinary, visual stylometry uses computational and statistical methods to calculate and compare these underlying image features in ways humans never could before. Instead of relying only on what our senses perceive, we can use these mathematical techniques to discover novel insights into artists and artworks.”
Could This Explain Why Some People Are So Much More Sensitive?
“Could sensory processing help explain the personalities of people we might otherwise just think of as ‘sensitive’? Might people with Sensory Processing Disorder even be at the extreme end of a spectrum of sensitivity that developed as an evolutionary advantage?”
The Murky Mess Of Museums’ Image Rights
“Of course it would be a beautiful thing if there could be a standard, but the reality is that there’s so many different considerations that cultural institutions have to take into account, based on their collections or jurisdictions or educational missions.”
Is It Harder To Be Immersed In A Book As We Age?
“Like everything else, the way we read changes with time and age. The books I find engrossing now still have the power to make the world around me vanish. But I can’t inhabit them as I did with my childhood favorites.”
An International Opera House Building Boom (Why?)
“Does China, with its own rich cultural history, need opera houses performing a Western repertoire? Does Oman need one? And what about Dubai, traditionally an Arab trading town? Performing opera in countries that are not part of the Western cultural history may be cultural imperialism initiated by the countries’ rulers rather than an enlightened offering to their residents.”
Why Sad Music Can Make Us Happy
“As human beings we like to feel things when we are moved”. Though the feeling may not be exactly the same as happiness, it may be the ability to cope with the sadness that gives the feeling of comfort.
How We Define Creativity In The 21st Century (And Around The World)
“Interviewing 806 young professional men and women in the U.S., U.K., Germany, Brazil, Turkey, Russia, China, and India, the report highlights three key topics. First, it defines a new global definition of creativity—combining originality, meaningfulness, and value—and the way that this manifests itself around the world. Second, it reveals a surprisingly lower degree of creative self-confidence in Europe and, in contrast, the creative optimism on display in markets that are currently growing economically. And third, it highlights the increasing importance of seeing creativity as a process to engage in collaboratively, rather than rely on a lone creative genius to dream up a solution.”
Director: It’s A Terrible Time To Be Director Of A Theatre
“We have become fundraisers who occasionally get time off to do a play, as opposed to theatre directors who have to take an interest in fundraising.”
Elon Musk: Odds Are Good We’re All Living In A Giant Simulation
Citing the speed with which video games are improving, he suggested that the development of simulations “indistinguishable from reality” was inevitable. The likelihood that we are living in “base reality,” he concluded, was just “one in billions.”