Laura Cappelle, a thoroughly bilingual arts journalist and a trained sociologist, looks at the assumptions made and misunderstood by both Ruth Mackenzie and the officials who hired and then fired her. – The New York Times
Author: Matthew Westphal
New Game Has Players And AI Creating Genre Fiction Together
“Powered by an artificial intelligence text generator, the video game [AI Dungeon] can be played on smartphones or computers, offering players a choice of five genres: fantasy, mystery, apocalyptic, zombies, or cyberpunk. At the beginning of each game, the AI generates the first lines of a unique and genre-specific adventure — prompting players to type in their next actions. Players can type whatever they want, and the AI storyteller responds and adapts the adventure.” – Publishers Weekly
Is there anybody out there? Yes.
No one had any idea if people would tune in to all this arts content when the digital floodgates opened in March. Now arts organizations are reporting massive increases in online audiences driven by viewers and participants who have never set foot inside their buildings. – Hannah Grannemann
William Burroughs’s Prophetic Mutterings
“Battle Instructions is Burroughs the self-styled revolutionary in 1960 at his most historically explicit, the courageous whistle-blower denouncing and exposing moguls, political leaders and scientists as part of a larger, deeper conspiracy at work behind the scenes of the mid-20th century.” – Jan Herman
Mark Twain, Skeptic Though He Was, Believed In Telepathy
“He believed, he once wrote, that a mind ‘still inhabiting the flesh’ could reach another mind at great remove. There was an inciting incident in the spring of 1875 (before Twain’s red hair went gray), which he recollected as ‘the oddest thing that ever happened to me.'” – The Paris Review
What A Time For Belarus Free Theatre To Be Starting A New Season
As protests against the latest rigged election of Alexander Lukashenko continue to rock the former Soviet state, “will the theatre, which has won increasing acclaim on tours abroad but puts on plays in a garage when in Minsk, finally be performing in a new, democratic Belarus? Or will Lukashenko launch a fresh crackdown that makes things even more unbearable for the arts?” – The Guardian
How Chekhov Created The Short Story As We Know It Today
“John Cheever [once] told [an] audience he was ‘one of perhaps ten American writers who are known as the American Chekhov’. The description isn’t unhelpful because it’s used carelessly, but because Chekhov’s influence is so widespread: most short story writers are Chekhovians, whether they realise it or not.” Chris Power looks at the nearly ubiquitous features of modern short fiction in English which Chekhov more or less invented. – New Statesman
Starchitect Richard Rogers Retires At Age 87
“Pritzker Prize-winning architect and high-tech architecture pioneer Richard Rogers has retired from Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, the practice he founded in 1977. … He is perhaps best known for designing the Centre Pompidou in Paris, London’s Lloyd’s building, Millennium Dome and Heathrow Terminal Five. His two Stirling Prize-winning projects are Madrid’s Barajas Airport and a Maggie’s Centre in London.” – Dezeen
How Did A Removed Confederate Monument End Up At An African-American Museum?
The CEO chose to take it, that’s how. “Spirit of the Confederacy, a bronze sculpture of an angel holding a sword and palm branch, was removed from Sam Houston Park in June … and is now on display in the courtyard of the Houston Museum of African American Culture. ‘As an educational space, we wanted people to think about it and engage with it,’ said John Guess, the museum’s Chief Executive Officer.” – Hyperallergic
How Paris’s Châtelet Theatre Fired Its Artistic Director (Rudely)
“[Ruth] Mackenzie was sitting in her office when she learned to her astonishment that she had been sacked for ‘bullying’. She was even more shocked, when [general director Thomas] Lauriot dit Prévost, with whom she shared an office, insisted she leave immediately.” – The Guardian