The bigger question remains how fakes ended up in Abbot’s collection, and the original works resold on the market. If the company and law enforcement are right and the works were switched during conservation, the operation suggests a knowledge of the art world. – The Art Newspaper
Author: Douglas McLennan
What If We’re Trying To Find The Theory Of Everything In The Wrong Places?
“The ascension to the tenth level of intellectual heaven would be if we find the question to which the universe is the answer, and the nature of that question in and of itself explains why it was possible to describe it in so many different ways.” It’s as though physics has been turned inside out. It now appears that the answers already surround us. It’s the question we don’t know. – The New Yorker
What are Our Writing Tools Doing To Writing? (And Reading?)
Writing is so influenced by the machines we write with. The process of creating something is shaped by the tools. Ergo, what we write is also shaped? And how about readers? With constant demands on their attention, with screens and email and notifications, the process of reading has changed. What’s a writer to do? – The New Yorker
How Your Body And Your Brain Work Together To Perceive The World
If you pay attention to your heart and bodily responses, they can tell you how you are feeling, and allow you to share in the emotions of others. Interoception can enhance the depth of our own emotions, emotionally bind us to those around us, and guide our intuitive instincts. We are now learning just how much the way we think and feel is shaped by this dynamic interaction between body and brain. – Aeon
MacDowell Colony Gets A New Director
Philip Himberg is joining the 112-year-old MacDowell Colony from the Sundance Institute, where he served as the artistic director of Sundance’s theater program for the past 23 years. He will be based at the organization’s New York office and will work closely with David Macy, MacDowell’s resident director at the organization’s facility in Peterborough, N.H. – The New York Times
Here’s A Good Primer On The Challenges (And Accomplishments So Far) Of Artificial Intelligence
In his masterpiece, “The Lady of Shalott”, Alfred Tennyson describes a character from the Arthurian legend who is cursed to remain in a tower, looking at the world only through a mirror, and weaving the “mirror’s magic sights” into her web. AI today is, it seems, in its Lady of Shalott stage, trying to weave four-dimensional reality into a two-dimensional web by looking into the dim, distorting, and often deceptive mirror of data. – 3 Quarks Daily
Classical Music Is Broken Online. What iTunes, Spotify, Apple Music And The Others Should Do About It
It’s difficult to find music, hard to catalog, and just an overall pain in the neck to manage. The problem? “We’re treating around 300 years of music from various countries, forms, philosophies, and so on as one genre. As far as modern commercial music, we don’t group the past 50 years together” – Mac Rumors
Heavy Metal Has A Nazi Problem. But What To Do About It?
“Should metal stay dangerous and controversial and offensive? Is it censorship to deny bands a platform for their genocidal views? Is it curtailing their free speech to make it harder for a band to get booked or get signed versus at what point does it become critical to keep these dangerous Fascist elements out of our scene? At what point is that record worth so much to you that you would buy it knowing that you were actively contributing to something that is harming other people?” – The New Yorker
The Salvador Mundi Has Disappeared. Where Is It?
Where the Salvator Mundi is now, no one is quite sure. Locked away in a store room in the Abu Dhabi Louvre, perhaps? Or being pored over in a laboratory somewhere by scientists and art experts determined to prove it is authentic? Or even hanging on the wall in a grand salon in a Saudi Palace, a reminder of a moment of madness. Many art lovers are left wondering if it will ever be seen again. – The Daily Mail (UK)
Monty Python Snubs V&A Museum For Proposed Show
“It became clear they were doing an exhibition on Surrealism…,” writes Eric Idle in his book. “Pretentious nonsense. We’re nothing to do with Dalí or Duchamp… Python has always been about comedy. That is the art.” – The Art Newspaper