Billie Holiday Comes to Queens
Thomas J Price and Tavares Strachan are frontrunners for a new commission to honor the jazz legend.
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Value creation, bullshit jobs and the future of work
We create a job whenever someone with the authority to hire decides the value created is greater than the wages paid. In my lifetime, we’ve invented 7 billion or more jobs, which is great news. Great for the people who were able to earn a living, and productive for everyone who
The Spread of Christianity Animated, from Antiquity Until Today
Christianity has long been closely identified with Western civilization. The association is especially strong, in modern times, with the United States of America, that source of derisively quoted, quite possibly apocryphal arguments that “if English was good enough for Jesus
Watch Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page Rock the Theremin, the Early Soviet Electronic Instrument
It can be frustrating for Led Zeppelin fans to hear the band reduced to plagiarism lawsuits or the quintessence of sexually-aggressive rock-star entitlement (though much of that is deserved). For one thing, Zeppelin’s occult songwriting tendencies, courtesy of both Page and
Truth, Fact, and the Patterning of Reality: Virginia Woolf on How We Come to Know the World
The great myth is that truth is an emergent property of fact, that it bubbles up from the bottom of reality once the mind attains enough fathoms of factuality. But objective reality — all those things like gravity and light and the fossil of the Archaeopteryx that exist whether
The Divine Powers of “Chicken Linda”
Pioneering performance artist Linda Mary Montano gave me a tour of her home-shrine and a glimpse into her lifelong spiritual quest through art.
What If Lock-In Doesn’t Matter So Much Anymore?
Interesting observation by Mitchell Hashimoto (creator of Vagrant and Ghostty ) on how a company’s or product’s choice of programming language matters less in the age of agentic programming: On the interesting side is how fungible programming languages are nowadays.
Guggenheim to Screen Artistic Portrait of Soccer Legend Zinédine Zidane
Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno's masterpiece about the French player will go on view at the museum this summer, timed with a bitter World Cup.
As Democracy Falters, a New York Museum Champions Activism
The Museum of the City of New York will open its expanded center for social activism alongside a slate of exhibitions, public programs, and screenings.
All the Star Wars Lightsaber Designs
This scan isn’t very good (best I could find), but these are all the lightsabers used by Jedi and Sith in the various Star Wars shows and movies. I think this is from a few years ago, so I’m not sure how up to date it is. In the SW universe, making your own saber is a Jedi and
My friend Adriana wrote about her story game based on...
My friend Adriana wrote about her story game based on Dante’s Inferno . “In Vya, I modeled Pom after the poet Alice Notley, whose Descent of Alette (1996) is one of the great contributions to the literature of katabasis.”
Play ‘Liminal Bingo,’ Pat Perry’s Participatory Photo Treasure Hunt
How many spaces on Pat Perry's bingo card can you get? Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Play ‘Liminal Bingo,’ Pat Perry’s Participatory Photo
CalArts President Booed During Commencement Speech
Students held signs protesting staff layoffs at the esteemed Southern California art school as Ravi S. Rajan took the stage.
Who Should Design NYC’s New Billie Holiday Monument?
Thomas J Price, Tavares Strachan, and Tanda Francis are in the running for a sculpture honoring the legendary jazz vocalist at the Jamaica Performing Arts Center.
How to Make a Living as an Artist
Contemporary pop artist fnnch’s essay on How to Make a Living as an Artist is pretty great. Lots in here that resonates with my experience of turning a creative hobby (KDO) into a business. Most people who enjoy making art should not try to make it their full time job. When
Remembering F. John Sierra, Valie Export, and Mary Lovelace O’Neal
This week, we honor a champion of Chicano art, an Austrian feminist artist, and a painter and Civil Rights luminary.
From Universe Today, an ongoing series of articles on A...
From Universe Today, an ongoing series of articles on A Brief-ish History of SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence). Part I is entitled “Where is Everybody?”
You Can Make an App for That . “The most important...
You Can Make an App for That . “The most important thing you’ll need is taste. Not objectively good taste, necessarily, so much as a keen sense of your own.”
Baumgartner Restoration Painstakingly Brings a Neglected Portrait Back to Life
A neglected portrait is given what seems like an almost miraculous second chance. Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Baumgartner Restoration
Our Mob Boss President
Jamelle Bouie writes that each US president molds the presidency in his own image and Trump has constructed a “government as protection racket and the president as mob boss”. 1 So what manner of presidency has Trump devised for himself? You could call it the pecuniary
I’m a Normie. Can Normies Really Vibe Code?
"Apparently anyone can vibe code anything these days. So Claude and I tried to make a database for tracking the petty grievances of the masses."
Mariame Kaba’s letter to young activists :...
Mariame Kaba’s letter to young activists : “I don’t know how things will turn out, but I am committed to something other than this — the current structure and state of this world. We can live differently.”
Tough Stuff: Women in The American Glass Studio
Highlighting works from the 1960s through today, this survey at the Corning Museum of Glass celebrates the legacies of women artists who helped shape the Studio Glass Movement in the US.
A pep talk in the face of despair . “Things can...
A pep talk in the face of despair . “Things can always get better, but it doesn’t happen via inertia. It happens because a lot of people tried.”
Our World in Ten Buildings: How Architecture Defines Who...
Our World in Ten Buildings: How Architecture Defines Who We Are and How We Live . Among the buildings are a school in Mass., a hospital in Rwanda, a prison in Norway, and a lighthouse in Maine. Intriguing!
How Do We Know What We Want: Milan Kundera on the Central Ambivalences of Life and Love
"We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come... We live everything as it comes, without warning."
Four Dozen Artists Celebrate Marine Wildlife and Lore in ‘Common Waters’
Arch Enemy Arts joins forces with PangeaSeed for a group show and fundraiser to help conserve our oceans. Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Four
India’s Hottest District Shuts at 10 AM as Mercury...
India’s Hottest District Shuts at 10 AM as Mercury Breaches 48 Degrees Celsius Mark . “After 10am, Banda becomes deserted. At first, you see one or two people outside. Then, as the day rises, there is only silence.” (48C = 118F)
The Prehistory of A.I. Slop
“Before ChatGPT, there was the Plot Robot, Auto-Beatnik, and a century’s worth of schemes for automating authorship.”