• chevron_right

      Artistic unicorns, protest ceramics and queer art from Morocco – the week in art

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 11:42

    Greenham Common inspires a new generation, designer Enzo Mari gets playful and Perth Museum dedicates its first exhibition to a mythical beast prized since antiquity – all in your weekly dispatch

    Unicorn
    Medieval bestiaries, Renaissance art and narwhal horns make for a fascinating first exhibition in this impressive new Scottish museum .
    Perth Museum, Perth , 30 March to 22 September

    Continue reading...
    • chevron_right

      What we’re reading: writers and readers on the books they enjoyed in March

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 10:44

    Authors, critics and Guardian readers discuss the titles they have read over the last month. Join the conversation in the comments

    I was lucky enough to be sent an early copy of David Nicholls’ forthcoming novel, You Are Here , a publication well-timed for those who adored the recent One Day Netflix adaptation . Nicholls’ latest book has long been on my radar, as I’ve written extensively about its central themes of solitude and loneliness.

    Continue reading...
    • chevron_right

      ‘It’s very easy to steal someone’s voice’: how AI is affecting video game actors

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 10:02

    The increased use of AI to replicate the voice and movements of actors has benefits but some are concerned over how and when it might be used and who might be left short-changed

    When she discovered her voice had been uploaded to multiple websites without her consent, the actor Cissy Jones told them to take it down immediately. Some complied. “Others who have more money in their banks basically sent me the email equivalent of a digital middle finger and said: don’t care,” Jones recalls by phone.

    “That was the genesis for me to start talking to friends of mine about: listen, how do we do this the right way? How do we understand that the genie is out of the bottle and find a way to be a part of the conversation or we will get systematically annihilated? I know that sounds dramatic but, given how easy it is to steal a person’s voice, it’s not far off the mark .

    Continue reading...
    • chevron_right

      John Cooper Clarke: ‘I read Kerouac at 12 and figured I could improve on it’

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 10:00

    The punk poet on finally getting JD Salinger, why he rereads the Bible, and growing up with Rupert Bear and Batman

    My earliest reading memory
    My earliest memories are of reading Rupert Bear, American comic books – Batman, Superman, Weird Planets, Creepy Worlds, Sinister Tales, Mad magazine, Kid Montana, Kid Colt: Outlaw and also Dick Tracy.

    My favourite book growing up
    The Buffalo Bill Annual, which contained the potted biographies of all the big hitters of the old west, including the titular figure himself plus Wild Bill Hickok, Jesse and Frank James, the Reno brothers, Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, Billy the Kid and more. I remember it had full-colour illustrations throughout.

    Continue reading...
    • chevron_right

      While She Sleeps: Self Hell review – exploding out of metalcore with a scream

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 09:00

    (Sleeps Brothers)
    On their sixth album, the hardcore Sheffield quintet bring furious riffs, howling, swearing and … acoustic guitars?

    Formed by school friends in former mining villages near Sheffield, While She Sleeps were briefly on a major label but have gone an independent route to build a passionate fanbase large enough for them to headline London’s 10,000 capacity Alexandra Palace. Meanwhile, over 17 years the quintet’s music has developed beyond metalcore to reflect wider influences from Radiohead to Kendrick Lamar.

    This sixth album attempts the sort of genre-busting metamorphosis Linkin Park went for with A Thousand Suns. Riffola and guttural, screamed vocals still abound (singer Loz Taylor has had three throat operations). Where 2021’s Sleeps Society album featured guests from Enter Shikari, Biffy Clyro and Sum 41, here Malevolence’s Alex Taylor pops in for the brutally anthemic Down.

    Continue reading...
    • chevron_right

      Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar review – an antihero in search of meaning

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 09:00 · 1 minute

    The Iranian-American poet’s debut novel tells the tale of a bereaved writer – but struggles with too much angst

    In Martyr!, the debut novel by Iranian-American poet Kaveh Akbar, a troubled young man is searching for a reason to live. Cyrus, the son of an Iranian migrant factory worker in Indiana, lost his mother in an infamous 1988 air disaster, when a US missile cruiser mistakenly shot down an Iranian civilian airliner in the final months of the Iran-Iraq war. This formative trauma has left a terrible legacy: when we meet him, in his late 20s, he’s a recovering alcoholic, struggling with fragile mental health and an unhealthy dependency on pharmaceutical sedatives; he “often wept for no reason, bit his thumbs till they bled”.

    An aspiring but unproductive writer, Cyrus has a fixation with martyrdom, and is researching a book on the subject. “It’s not an Islam thing,” he clarifies, “[it’s] about secular, pacifist martyrs. People who gave their lives to something larger than themselves.” To this end he travels to New York and interviews an older, terminally ill Iranian artist, Orkideh, who is exhibiting herself in a Marina Abramović-style exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum. They strike up a tender rapport, and Cyrus gradually begins to work through his issues.

    Continue reading...
    • chevron_right

      If life is one giant computer simulation, God is a rubbish player | Dominik Diamond

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 09:00 · 1 minute

    While religion doesn’t feature much in video games, I find the theory that we are all characters in a huge sim ever more believable – and appealing

    It’s Easter weekend, when Catholics like me spend hours in church listening to the extended editor’s cut of a story whose ending we already know. Sitting there for the millionth performance of the Passion recently, I got to thinking about how few religious video game characters I’ve ever encountered. It’s interesting that in a world where so many people’s lives are dictated by religious beliefs, there is such a scarcity of religion in games. I mean, you could argue that all games are Jesus homages, with their respawns and extra lives, but even I admit that’s a stretch.

    The Peggies in Far Cry 5 are a mind-controlling violent cult; those Founders in BioShock Infinite use religion to elevate and justify hatred of foreigners; and you have those wackadoodles in Fallout worshipping atomic bombs. Religion is almost exclusively used as means for leaders to get minions to do bad things. (Admittedly, they may be on to something here.) I guess that when so many video games are structured so as to set you up as a lone protagonist, up against a huge force, religion is a fairly obvious go-to villain.

    Continue reading...
    • chevron_right

      Steve! (Martin) to Emily the Criminal: the seven best films to watch on TV this week

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 09:00


    A thrilling documentary about the wild life of Steve Martin, the first comic ever to sell out stadiums – and Aubrey Plaza is electric as always playing a food delivery driver turned fraudster

    Continue reading...
    • chevron_right

      Michelle Moeller: Late Morning review – sparkling, ethereal sound manipulations

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 08:30 · 1 minute

    (AKP Recordings)
    The US artist’s debut album mixes prepared piano with programmed synth effects in woozy harmonic compositions that soar and thrill

    It’s often difficult for pianists to avoid playing a synthesiser keyboard like a piano. Michelle Moeller studied classical piano to a high level, but while completing a degree in composition at Mills College in Oakland, California, she came under the spell of two electronically inclined mentors, Zeena Parkins and John Bischoff, and became obsessed with synth technology. In order to “turn off her piano-player brain” and concentrate on timbre, Moeller started to use Max/MSP interfaces rather than keyboards to generate synth sounds. The results are startling. Artificial noises sparkle and flutter in the higher register and toll like church bells in the lower register. She creates warped, ethereal, space-age noises that are complex of timbre and harmony.

    Late Morning, her debut album, features some piano-dominated tracks: Nest is a superb, jazzy meditation, using Erik Satie-like parallel harmonies, while Corridor is a pulsating piece of clockwork minimalism in 5/4, where Moeller’s piano is accompanied by the low-key textural percussion of Willie Winant and Wesley Powell. But the most sonically adventurous moments here pair Moeller’s pianistic virtuosity with her interest in synth technology and manipulated sounds. On the wonderfully woozy Leafless, her prepared piano – presumably treated with paperclips and bolts to create muffled harmonics – is further mutilated until it sounds like the instrument is melting. Sift’s bell-like chorus is topped by tightly harmonised shakuhachi-style improvisations by Mitch Stahlmann (reminiscent of André 3000 ’s recent flute album). On Slate, her creaky prepared piano takes its place among a symphony of distorted electronic glitches and chirrups. A thrilling and disorientating LP.

    Continue reading...