Author: Matthew Westphal

Art Community Complains That Nominees For Prize Are All Straight White Males – So All The Nominees Withdraw

“Earlier this month, members of the Belgian art community signed an open letter objecting to the exclusionary selection of artists for [the 2019 BelgianArtPrize] shortlist. … {Now those five artists] contend that the shift in public attention away from ‘artistic discourse or content’ and towards ‘white male privilege’ has undermined the prize and made it impossible for their work to be taken seriously. The withdrawal, they say, is a necessary step ‘in order that the question of art and merit can plausibly be rethought, restored and put back into the equation.'”

Canadian Breaks Into House To Drink Wine And Play Piano

Only in Ontario? “According to [local police in the town of Erin], the man broke-in to the unlocked residence, drank a bottle of wine from the fridge, then proceeded to play the family’s piano until he was caught. There were two residents located upstairs at the time of the break-in.” (One shudders to think how this might have played out in Florida.)

Police Called On Ohio Man Because Someone Mistook His Bassoon For A Rifle

A 22-year-old bassoonist was in a church parking lot in the town of Springfield, sitting on his trunk and playing scales while waiting for a rehearsal to start, when he was slowly approached by police wearing bulletproof vests. It seems a nearby citizen, worried by mass shootings in the news and unfamiliar with large double-reed instruments, had called 911. Said the young man, “In the right kind of light, it looks like a bazooka, but I don’t think it was the right kind of light.” (Again, one shudders to think how this might have played out in Florida.)

Top Posts From AJBlogs 05.23.18

Gloom at the Top: Why Megabucks Auctions Are Broken (and how to fix them)
The thrill is gone. For several of the highest-estimated properties in the recent series of Impressionist, modern and contemporary sales at Sotheby’s and Christie’s, the “auction fever” of yesteryear has given way to single-bid transfers … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2018-05-23

Oh, Yes, Tom Talbert’s Music…
In Monday’s posting revisiting an early Rifftides piece about Tom Talbert (pictured ca. 1956), the staff was remiss in not including examples of Talbert’s music. Let’s remedy that. … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2018-05-23

Fluxus Artist Geoffrey Hendricks Dead At 86

“The Flux Divorce” – a famous public ceremony he staged with his wife, artist Nye Ffarrabas, to mark their split – “was just one of many adventurous artworks and art events he created or participated in during a career that also included teaching art at Rutgers University for 47 years. Mr. Hendricks literally looked to the heavens for inspiration for some of his art; he was known for paintings of the sky, which he would render on traditional canvases and assorted other surfaces. (A fellow artist, Dick Higgins, gave him the nickname Cloudsmith.) But, like other Fluxus artists, he went far beyond the boundaries of painting.”

Where Artificial Intelligence Went Wrong, And How To Teach Machines To *Really* Think

“We read about computers that can master ancient games and drive cars. [Turing Award-winning researcher Judea] Pearl is underwhelmed. As he sees it, the state of the art in artificial intelligence today is merely a souped-up version of what machines could already do a generation ago: find hidden regularities in a large set of data. … The key, he argues, is to replace reasoning by association with causal reasoning” – that is, teach machines to process cause and effect.

Rambert Premieres Its First Full-Length Story Ballet In Nearly 40 Years

“Choreographer Kim Brandstrup’s new work was inspired by Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s 17th-century play [Life is a Dream] about a prince imprisoned in a tower by his father. … Inspired by the play’s themes of ‘the longing for authentic experience, and the need to dream’, the Olivier-winning choreographer has transposed the action to a rundown 1959 rehearsal room.” (photo journal)

As The Podcast Boom Continues, Can Audio-Only Fiction Catch On?

“Gimlet Media, the podcasting startup based in Brooklyn, tapped the valve of radio drama in 2016 with Homecoming, the fictional thriller podcast brought to life by Catherine Keener, Oscar Isaac and David Schwimmer.” And more high-profile fiction podcasts are coming, with the likes of Kristen Wiig, Ethan Hawke, John Cameron Mitchell, Glenn Close, Cynthia Erivo, and Patti LuPone involved. But there’s one problem: “a vast majority of the audience is not listening in a concentrated way, like they would at home while watching a Netflix drama. Successful podcasts need to reach audience that is not 100% ‘with it’ the whole time, who get distracted. And that’s a real challenge when you’re dealing with fiction.”

Mumbling Isn’t Sloppy Or Careless Speaking – It’s Data Compression (Science Says So!)

“[Data-compression] algorithms trim down the space needed to digitally store sounds and images by throwing out information that is redundant or doesn’t add much to our perceptual experience — for example, tossing out data at sound frequencies we can’t hear, or not bothering to encode slight gradations of color that are hard to see. The idea is to keep only the information that has the greatest impact. Mumbling — or phonetic reduction, as language scientists prefer to call it — appears to follow a similar strategy.”