Tag: 10.27.20

Is Kenyan Literature Finally Finding Its Footing?

“Kenya’s literary dwarfism is partly a result of the virulent anti-intellectualism of the longest running regime in the country, the period from 1978 and 2002 when Daniel arap Moi was President. Those years were characterized by arbitrary arrests, detention, and the exile of scholars including world-renowned author Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Micere Mugo, both former professors of literature at the University of Nairobi.” – Guernica

What Happened To Americans’ Inherent Belief In Goodness?

Wallace Shawn: “America’s addiction to believing in its own goodness was quietly fading away, and the old words that President Kennedy used had become increasingly nauseating to a lot of people. People were not inspired, people were not breathing in self-esteem, when they heard the old phrases. And then Donald Trump came along and was elected, and he left that rhetoric far behind. He said goodbye to it.” – New York Review of Books

Old Recordings Of Classical Masters Are Sounding Better Than Ever

“The most dramatic evolution in the classical recording industry has also been the quietest — partly because the most glamorous figures involved are long deceased.” David Patrick Stearns looks at labels specializing in historic recordings: the use of advanced technology on crackly old source material means that, for instance, “you [can even] hear what sounds like Furtwängler turning his score pages in the 1949 Ring Cycle at La Scala.” – WQXR (New York City)

Utah Is Actually A Dance Hotbed. How’d That Happen?

“We’re relatively small, yet boast a top-tier ballet company, the nation’s first repertory dance company, the first school of ballet at an American University, the world’s largest ballroom dance program and multiple powerhouse studios.” How did that happen? “Utah has a unique history that nourished dance,” says one local insider, and that history very much includes the Mormon settlers. – Salt Lake Magazine

Where Music Comes From, According To Anthropologists

In warfare, rhythm and melody allow tribal groups to signal their strength, numbers, and coordination across far distances, to both allies and foes. This is not unlike how animals commonly use vocalizations to signal their territory or scare off others. “If we study music in traditional societies, we see it used consistently to form political alliances.” – Fast Company

How Crisis Leadership Works

Swarm intelligence in people occurs when all the members of a group come together to create a synergy that magnifies their individual capabilities. It’s the kind of unselfish behavior that one sees on the battlefield, when soldiers know that they depend on one another for their lives. Swarm intelligence is more instinctual than coöperation, in which people work deliberately together to achieve a common goal; it’s an emotional and reactive behavior, not a plan that can be written out on a flowchart. – The New Yorker

Who Gets Credit For Art Created By AI?

Researchers at MIT Media Lab and the Max Planck Institute for Human Development are wondering how people decide who gets credit for art that was created using artifical intelligence. After all, there would have been many different people involved in producing and selecting the original art used as the AI’s training data, in creating the program, and in curating the final output. In a recently published paper they showed that who gets credit for AI-generated art all depends on how we think and talk about the role of AI. – Forbes

Brussels Re-Closes Its Museums As COVID Cases Surge; Other European Museums To Follow

Museums and galleries around Europe are bracing for further restrictions as the infection rates rise to their highest levels yet. Institutions in Wales have been closed as the country implemented a two-week national “firebreak” lockdown that began October 24. Meanwhile, museums and galleries in Northern Ireland were asked to close on October 16 for four weeks. – Artnet