The 40th annual Chicago Jazz Festival, four days free to all of unfettered, usually joyous music held in beautiful downtown Millennium Park, started last night, setting the tone for a weekend of exciting, civically-supported music here — and similar outpourings of jazz and blues, America’s vernacular musics, are offered throughout the U.S. this Labor Day weekend.
Author: Matthew Westphal
How To Tell ‘Deepfake’ Videos From Genuine In The Blink Of An Eye
What’s a deepfake video? It uses the type of artificial intelligence system known as a “deep neural network” to study a large body of images of an individual and then synthesize new moving images based on the existing ones – in other words, to create video of that individual doing something she never actually did. Inevitably, deepfake videos of political candidates will appear, possibly as soon as this fall. How can we spot them? Prof. Siwei Lyu and two colleagues have worked out a way. (The headline above is not metaphorical.)
NY Times Critics Try To Make Peace With The Jukebox Musical
“Ben Brantley and Jesse Green, the Times‘s chief theater critics, joined the critic Elisabeth Vincentelli to answer the big questions: Why are the bad ones so bad? Why are the good ones better? And are there good ones? Scott Heller, the theater editor, played referee. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation, set to the music of Abba, the Go-Go’s, Donna Summer, Bob Dylan and more.”
How Jazz Was Subsumed Into The Nonprofit Arts-Industrial Complex (And Lost A Lot Of Its Mojo)
Dale Chapman, author of The Jazz Bubble: “Jazz is presently understood less as a commercially viable expressive form in its own right than as a symbol of something else: as an artistic practice that is seen as both ‘legitimate’ (in other words, as inoffensive to established institutions), and as contributing to multiculturalism, through its links to communities of color. Thus, jazz becomes the kind of genre that can give an imprimatur of both respectability and social inclusivity to a large redevelopment project, even while it may be of little interest to a prospective for-profit club owner.”
Why We Need Artist Residencies In Places Like The Mall Of America And A San Francisco Garbage Dump
Amanda Petrusich: “In the past decade, a spate of unconventional residency programs have offered unused (or otherwise flexible) space to artists starved for time, solitude, or simply a room of their own, and as a result artists have taken up residence on moving Amtrak trains, a barrier island off the coast of Texas, the tower of a bridge that crosses a shipping canal, and an oceanographic research vessel. I can’t decide whether the grimness of some of these places … is simply funny or an apt and horrifying reflection of how America presently esteems its artists.”
As It Searches For A New Director, DC’s National Gallery Is A House Divided
“The search for the next director of the National Gallery of Art has revealed deep divisions within the federally funded institution, a palace of high art that is dogged by old-fashioned ideas about museum operations and staff claims of widespread mismanagement. … With [Rusty] Powell’s 26-year tenure coming to an end, the museum has the opportunity to revitalize its programs and modernize its operation, according to interviews with 22 current and former employees and industry experts.”
A.O. Scott On How 20 Years Of Tech Has And Hasn’t Changed Movie Reviewing
The biggest difference, says the co-chief critic of The New York Times, is the timing of writing and publishing reviews (with an obsession with spoilers as a consequence). What hasn’t changed? “I still go to screenings!”
J.R.R. Tolkien’s Final Book (And It Really Is The Last) Is Here
The Fall of Gondolin, though the last of Tolkien’s books to be published, was written early in his career, while he was recovering from the Battle of the Somme in 1917; it depicts an early stage in the history of Middle-earth, providing background for the tales that made Tolkien world-famous.
How Caryl Churchill Has Transformed British Theatre
As Churchill turns 80, writer David Benedict – with contributions from such luminaries as Vicky Featherstone, Rufus Norris, Lucy Kirkwood, and Dominic Cooke – takes an extended look at the powerful effect her work has had and the way younger playwrights have been influenced by her.
Ten Minutes After Exhibit Opens, Mother And Daughter Destroy Its Main Sculpture
Artist Sean Matthews opened his show “Recycled Play” at the Susquehanna Art Museum in Harrisburg, Pa. on August 17; the installation’s centerpiece was “Fair and Square,” a repurposed swing set with the chains rewelded so that the seats were extended and suspended like the Scales of Justice. Alas, two of the exhibit’s first visitors evidently looked at “Fair and Square” and saw a swing set.