“A.L.Ex (which stands for Artificial Language Experiment) has been fed the subtitles from more than 100,000 films, from action movies like Deep Impact to the pornographic film Deep Throat. When someone talks to it, the system uses a tool called a neural network, vaguely modeled on the brain, to analyze similar exchanges in its database and compose its own response. [Creator Piotr] Mirowski made his stage debut with A.L.Ex in July 2016. It did not go to plan.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Check Out The Major Public Art In San Francisco’s Brand-New Transit Center
The Transbay Transit Center (also known as the Salesforce Transit Center), opening this weekend, features a 20,000-square-foot terrazzo floor by Julie Chang, an oval-shaped rolling-text piece by (of course) Jenny Holzer, a ceiling light sculpture by James Carpenter, and a fountain by Ned Kahn in a 5.4-acre rooftop park.
Hollywood’s Billion-Dollar Plan To Make And Market Ten-Minute Videos For Smartphones
NewTV, founded and led by former Disney exec Jeffrey Katzenberg and with former eBay and HP chief Meg Whitman as CEO, “is aiming to launch by the end of 2019, with a premium lineup of original, short-form series comprising episodes of 10 minutes each. The service will have two subscription tiers,” with and without advertising. Just about every major Hollywood studio has bought in.
Lumberyard, The New Dance Center In The Catskills, Announces Its First Season
“The center, 5,500 square feet of performance spaces and buildings along the Hudson River in upstate New York, had a soft opening this summer but is to officially open on Sept. 1 with [Alan] Cumming and [Savion] Glover, who will be joined by the jazz drummer Marcus Gilmore.” The highlight of the fall will be a new piece by Lucinda Childs, set to a score by Pulitzer winner David Lang.
You Can Now Order A Bespoke Bed With A National Gallery Painting As Your Headboard
“Savoir Beds, known for their hefty price tag and their extraordinary contents (think cashmere made from the necks of Mongolian goats), have partnered with … London’s National Gallery to create custom beds, each upholstered with artwork on the headboard and the base.” And customers can choose any image the museum owns.
Frida Kahlo Exhibition In Hungary Criticized For ‘Promoting Communism’
In an article headlined “This is the way communism is promoted using state money,” the conservative newspaper Magyar Idők, aligned with the nationalist Fidesz party of prime minister Viktor Orbán, wrote about a popular show of the Mexican painter’s work at the Hungarian National Gallery, “You won’t believe it but Trotsky has emerged in Budapest again, this time from Frida Kahlo’s bed.”
World Cup Boosted Sales Of Russian Literature
“According to state statistics, more than 1 million foreign tourists and football fans visited Russia in the first two months of this summer, contributing a growth in book sales reported to be almost 50 percent higher than were seen in the same timeframe of 2017.” The increased demand from visitors was largely for the classics, with the only widely-requested 20th-century titles being The Master and Margarita and Doctor Zhivago.
Does The American Museum World Take Too Hard A Line On Deaccessioning?
The case of the Berkshire Museum “raises an existential question for museums as a whole: should an institution be allowed to die on the vine to preserve collections? … Are we as a field saying that museums are ethically bound to continue ‘business as usual’ and never change their missions?” Bob Beatty surveys the dilemma and lays out a possible solution.
Furtwängler and the Nazis — Take Two
I am returning to the topic of Furtwängler because my previous blog produced a minor miracle – a thread of responses that yielded heightened understanding of a complex topic. … I now feel impelled to revisit Topic A – not Furtwängler the man (B), but Furtwängler the conductor – and see what A and B put together look like today.
An Opera About The Dr. Ruth Of 1920s England
“In 1918, six months before the end of the first world war, Marie Stopes published Married Love. … There’s nothing about sexual problems, nor contraception (apart from one chapter), but instead, she writes about the ecstasy of fulfillment.” (The book played a key role in an episode of Downton Abbey.) She then received tens of thousands of letters asking for advice – about sexual problems, venereal diseases, and above all, contraception. Composer Alex Mills and librettist Jennifer Thorp have turned a collection of those letters into a chamber opera.