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The Story Of The Suffering Artist Is A Dangerous One

“On the face of it, the story of how I wrote my fourth novel – which I was lucky enough to sell for my first comfortable yearly salary – could resemble a heartwarming success story. It could readily be used to justify the trope of the suffering artist; the idea that we produce our best work when experiencing hardship. The truth is, we don’t. It’s a dangerous myth used to systematically devalue artistic labour.” – Irish Times

Why Ritual Is So Important: It Works

“No culture and few individuals live without ritual. … And here’s the thing. Rituals work – even for people who say they do not believe in them. [Researchers have found that] rituals alleviate grief, reduce anxiety, increase confidence, … [and] aid self-control.” Jay Griffiths examines the power of ritual in action, especially on an island where one sees it everywhere. — Aeon

#MeToo Is A Story For Women To Tell, Not Guys Like David Mamet

Mamet’s upcoming play Bitter Wheat centers on a very Harvey Weinstein-like studio head, and Steven Berkoff is preparing a one-man show about Weinstein himself. Lyn Gardner is not having it: “Because women own this story. Not a couple of middle-aged playwrights whose recent hits have been sparse, and who are fascinated by male ‘monsters’ and want to give them more stage time. They have had quite enough.” — The Stage

DC’s Hot New Performance Art Installation: ‘Ivanka Vacuuming’

The piece by conceptual artist Jennifer Rubell is simple enough to describe: an Ivanka-look-alike performer, immaculately dressed in pink, repeatedly vacuums a pink carpet as visitors toss crumbs onto the rug for her machine to suck up. (And it’s all streamed live.) Yet, points out Philip Kennicott, Ivanka Vacuuming is really not so simple at all. — The Washington Post

The Mad Scientist Of Vocal Ensembles, Roomful Of Teeth

“Roomful of Teeth is a kind of lab experiment for the human voice. Its eight singers cover a five-octave range, from grunting lows to dog-whistle highs. Three have perfect pitch, all have classical training, and [director Brad] Wells has brought in a succession of experts to teach them a bewildering range of other techniques: alpine yodeling, Bulgarian belting, Persian Tahrir, and Inuit and Tuvan throat singing, among others. Because the group writes or commissions almost all of its pieces, it can create vocal effects that most singers would never attempt.” — The New Yorker

Met Museum, MIT, And Microsoft Unveil Joint AI Project

At the museum on Monday, “[the three partners] present[ed] five digital prototypes that harness artificial intelligence to make use of images of objects in the Met’s collection. … Visitors could sample applications like Storyteller, which uses voice recognition AI to conjure Met images illustrating whatever words a user utters aloud … [or] My Life, My Met, which uses AI to analyze a user’s Instagram’s posts and replaces the images with the closest matches to works in the Met’s collection.” — The Art Newspaper

Reimagining Shakespeare’s ‘Dark Lady’ For Ballet

First, who was the Dark Lady? Most likely, it was a black brothel owner in London known as Lucy Negro — whom actress and poet Caroline Randall Williams took as the inspiration for her 2015 book Lucy Negro, Redux. That book in turn inspired choreographer Paul Vasterling’s new work, Attitude: Lucy Negro Redux, which he created for dancer Kayla Rowser and Nashville Ballet, with music by MacArthur fellow Rhiannon Giddens and text from the book performed by Williams herself. — Dance Magazine

For 100 Years Of Women’s Suffrage, New York Philharmonic Commissions Music (Lots Of It) By Women

“To mark the centennial of the 19th Amendment, which barred states from denying voting rights based on gender, the Philharmonic has commissioned new works by 19 female composers, eight of which will be performed next season. Besides celebrating what Deborah Borda, the orchestra’s president and chief executive officer, called a ‘tectonic shift in American culture,’ the project sends a statement to the classical music field at a moment when female composers still struggle to be heard.” — The New York Times

Philadelphia History Museum, The Former Atwater Kent, May Be Acquired By Drexel University

“According to Drexel, museum, and city officials, the university would oversee pruning the vast number of objects — there are more than 100,000 items in the collection — to a ‘manageable’ size, digitizing the whole kit and kaboodle, and making it all available online, suitable for searching by institutions in need of loans or those seeking to mount new exhibitions.” The museum’s historic building will be closed and possibly sold. — The Philadelphia Inquirer