Curating The Week
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Curating The Week: A History of Western Classical Music, Building AI Models, AI’s Effects on Cognition
• An essay on a history of Western classical music. “We scarcely know where music resides; we cannot fix it in place; it flows past us; to varying degrees it envelops us, carries us away, floods our mental space. It’s especially hard to disentangle ourselves from music’s emotional content. Great music moulds time, such that… Continue reading
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Curating the Week: John Berger, Writing as Mixing, EQing Vocals
• An essay on John Berger. “Right now, we’re in the midst of an attention crisis, individually and collectively snared in an infinite scroll of disruption and distraction. Berger saw this crisis coming and foresaw its consequences. In 1978, writing about photography and its impact on the modern world, he argued that the dominance of… Continue reading
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Curating the Week: The Additional Touch, Philip Glass’s Music, How to Write a Paper
• An article about soccer player Rayan Cherki and the art of the additional touch. “In the most decisive moments, Cherki gives the impression that he is able to pause time, calculate the best decision and elegantly execute it. Yet, he does this subconsciously and is empowered by his artistic touch of the ball.” “He… Continue reading
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Curating The Week: Intellectual Strength Training, AI Chatbots, Popular Music and Politics
• An essay on intellectual strength training. “Intellectual strength isn’t transmitted by lecture or implanted with a diploma. It is built the same way that the figure skater builds a routine or the running back learns to explode through a crack in the line—repetition after repetition, failure after failure, with no shortcut available and no… Continue reading
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Curating the Week: AI Music, AI Book Scanning, The Uses of Criticism
• An essay on AI music. “In music, as elsewhere, curatorial skill may grow more valuable, along with the ability to write a creative A.I. prompt. (If this sounds to you like a musical dystopia, then you can imagine how Sousa would have felt if he’d learned that d.j.s would eventually conquer the world.) Yet… Continue reading
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Curating the Week: Juggling, Music Teachers, Writing, Tacit Knowledge in Research
• An article about the cognitive benefits of juggling. “Juggling can induce neuroplasticity in the brain, resulting in structural changes and adaptations. It can act as a simple calibration system.” “It’s essential to be ‘right on that edge where it’s not quite comfortable.’” • An essay on music teachers. “Grappling with an unruly instrument and… Continue reading
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Curating The Week: Conducting, Thickness In Art, AI Jargon In Speech
• An essay on conducting. “With most kinds of musical performance, the listener can sense, in their heart and their gut, how demanding the musician’s task is. To possess the infinitesimally sensitive fine motor skills required to make a violin sing, or the poise and breath control needed to coax beauty out of a trombone,… Continue reading
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Curating The Week: Creative Mindsets, Perceiving Time, AI’s Effects On Writing
• An essay on creative mindsets. “The three years of solitary work at Montpellier had not been wasted in the least: that intellectual isolation was what had allowed [mathematician Alexander Grothendieck] to access the cognitive space where new ideas arise. He had made himself at home there.” “This might look wasteful if you think what… Continue reading
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Curating The Week: Running And Philosophy, Writing With AI, How To Exist
• A film about running and philosophy (whose soundtrack makes good use of silence). • An essay on why not to write with AI. “The problem with writing with A.I. is that it’s mentally enfeebling — an escalator toward a result when you really need to make a daily habit of taking the stairs. As… Continue reading
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Curating The Week: Making Early Digital Art, Mastering, AI and Ethics
Roy Lichtenstein, Landscape in Fog (1996) • An essay about making early digital art. “It’s 1990, and I still don’t know where the darn tiger comes from. But I do know that there’s no program that will draw one from scratch, any size or pose or color or style, like I want it, without an… Continue reading
