from the South Bay
Stoppard’s occasionally engaging and frequently frustrating play puts two minor characters from ‘Hamlet’ in a universe where physical laws don’t apply, free will is an illusion, insanity is the norm, and a hideous fate inevitable. Sounds eerily familiar.
We are nowhere near the end of this torture.
Youtube Channel: Johan Jacobsen
Let Friday showed that yes. Yes, it can.
Rest in peace, Justice Ginsburg. Emphasis on Justice.
The slide into whatever lies beyond madness accelerates. Weeks of federal inaction during a medical emergency, instant promises of military aid when people protest murder.
It will get worse and it won’t get better.
Youtube Channel: FilmStruck
Yeah, me neither.
Vandalized COVID signs in Manhattan Beach.
In response to today’s rando political thug claiming he can parlay on equal terms with a renowned immunologist.
For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled. — R.P. Feynman
COVID ravages the world. America bails out Boeing, Wall Street, and if all goes to plan, assorted chunks of 45’s cancerous financial empire. Meanwhile, Germany rolls out support to its artists and musicians, a nod to what that nation holds dear and what it finds worth defending.
In honor of a plague-affected World Piano Day, the German record label Deutsche Grammophon virtually brings together a number of celebrated pianists to help us remember that our mostly corrupt, degraded, and base species nevertheless has had moments of glory.
Artists include Maria João Pires 0:00 Víkingur Ólafsson 21:15 Joep Beving 40:38 Rudolf Buchbinder 01:05:39 Seong-Jin Cho 01:25:24 Jan Lisiecki 01:44:02 Kit Armstrong 02:14:19 Simon Ghraichy 02:46:18 Evgeny Kissin 03:17:43 Daniil Trifonov 03:26:00.
Update 3/31/20: Well, so much for DG’s benevolence. The video has been marked Private.
“Be it ever so crumbly, there’s no place like Rome” said Bugs Bunny and was he ever correct. In the face of a real problem, our farcical economy is exposed once again as a house of straw and sticks on quicksand with vultures above and weasels beneath. And I apologize to vultures and weasels everywhere.
Youtube Channel: wKw
The Grand Nagus is indeed above the law.
A prediction from five years ago: “Big Data – The Next Fad to Hit the Arts?”
Two very recent reports:
The Data Illusion: by Jonathan Kott in The Arts Professional – 14 June 2019
So why are funders so keen to request data from the [arts] sector, while apparently being so careless with their own? The answer may be in the symbolic role of data. The academic Eleonora Belfiore believes that “the taking part in the auditing process itself becomes a performative act: it is the very fact of gathering data and publishing, more than the concern for what the data tell you, or the rigour (or lack thereof) of their collection that becomes paramount… The situation is convenient for funders, as it reinforces their power while making it harder to hold their own performance to account. It also provides useful work for consultants and researchers. For arts organisations themselves, however, the advantages are less obvious.”
A crisis of faith: is Big Data the art world’s new religion?: by Margaret Carrigan in The Art Newspaper – 14 June 2019
Like everything that has been baptised in the fire of Big Data, connoisseurship has been replaced by “intel” – what we know is what we can count. When it comes to the data-driven art market, to pinpoint value is to minimise risk, and without risk—well, then faith is obsolete anyway.