FASHION

The Best Collections From Paris Fashion Week

Content Courtesy of: vogue.com

Written by: SARAH MOWER

Nobody sent out an agenda, but this season’s Paris shows effectively felt like a huge conference of voices speaking about how to represent women in the era of Time’s Up. Threads of the same conversations kept coming up and intertwining—in what designers said in interviews, in the symbolism we read into their clothes, and in the running commentaries between colleagues in cars and cafés.

We all saw, felt, and engaged in the issues. For one: How can fashion act as a conduit for female power? We saw throwbacks to ’80s skirtsuits and shoulders dissected and rethought in a time when female employment equality and political power urgently demand to be backed. We saw serial cases of classics—tweeds, camel coats, tartans—being morphed into modernity by brainiac imaginers. We witnessed cultural influences from Islam taking in head coverings and modest dressing.

We felt the inspiration of the past meeting our new day: 1968-er Paris revolutionaries and sci-fi knocking at the doors of fashion consciousness. Finally, at a moment when there are so many wildly complicated issues to process, there was love for the designers who backed up and calmed us down with beautifully simple clothes—and equally for the ones who took us off, up, and away into the realms of visual wonder.

Closing remarks, then? Hard to summarize, but this much is true: When smart designers work into the creative tensions of our times, great things can happen.

Marine Serre

Photo by: Getty Images

Marine Serre

“Marine Serre titled her terrific third collection Manic Soul Machine, a reflection, as she put it, on the roller-coaster ride of the first six months of leading her own label. It’s apt. The hyper-speed at which the industry moves means designers like Serre have to deal with not only the voraciousness of the hunger for newness but being able to present to the world a cohesive and consistent image from the get-go as well. It’s yet harder still if you’re someone like Serre, who is not only a significant talent but also self-aware and reflective about how fashion can find its place in today’s world and what it should actually stand for. Consideration of the political, the societal, the cultural, the sexual—they’re as much part of who she is as they are part of making great clothes. Which she does, and then some.” —Mark Holgate

Christian Dior Photo by: Indigital

Christian Dior

“Maria Grazia Chiuri understands her own time. Dovetailing as it has with the Trump era, her Dior tenure has coincided with a great feminist uprising. She’s held up a mirror to feminism’s fourth wave, quoting the Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie one season and the art theorist Linda Nochlin in another. This season, Chiuri saved almost all the slogans for her set, which elaborately reproduced magazine covers and protest art of the late 1960s. And she took up the clothes of that era—the crochets, the embroideries, the patchworks—and filtered them through Dior’s luxury lens. The charm of the collection was in its rich craftiness.” —Nicole Phelps

Paco Rabanne Photo by: Getty

Paco Rabanne

“Lucky were the girls in the Paco Rabanne show. With their effortlessly undone hair and fresh makeup, they shone in an outstanding Julien Dossena show—the sort that made women watching not only think, That’s amazing, but also, I think I can take something from this! The ingredients: Paco Rabanne’s chain mail heritage, convincingly meshed in with perfect French classics. ‘I wanted to get back that super-cultivated, super-Parisian thing,’ said Dossena in a preview at the Paco Rabanne studio. The genius was all in Dossena’s layering methods. Instead of leaving all the chain mail as theoretical ’60s space-age showstoppers, he put his through a ’90s filter—those days of grunge and minimalism when the answer to making anything dressed-up work was to layer it over a T-shirt, put it with a white shirt, and stick on a pair of flip-flops. These flip-flops came smothered in the plastic paillettes, mind.” —Sarah Mower

Loewe Photo by: Corey Tenold

Loewe

“There will be coat wars ahead. So many collections, so much outerwear this season! At Loewe, Jonathan Anderson made a very strong pitch for owning the top of the field, with a score of no less than 15 coats on his runway—something to cover every possible use, from a walk in the country, to commuting, to school runs, attending private views, events, dinners, and the like. Why stop at a duffle coat, a tufty shearling, a black-and-white chevron-patterned fit-and-flare midi? There is evening, too: a quite elegantly beautiful black trapeze with puffy leather cuffs. Even to those of us who’ve barely been to an opera, the idea of arriving somewhere in that evening coat was aspirational.” —S.M.

Comme des Garçons Photo by: Getty

Comme des Garçons

“Rei Kawakubo put on a hugely enjoyable display of over-the-top fabulosity today—a show created from frills and fantasy, and crinolines, and lace, and flowers—her vision of super-girly Vaudevillian charm, taken to delightful heights of excess. Kawakubo had been reading ‘Notes on Camp,’ Susan Sontag’s 1964 essay. This was one of those Comme des Garçons collections that is an uplifting shot in the arm for fashion in general; an argument for creativity and the joy of dressing up. It ended in a moment of sweetness that will be a memory of the season—Kawakubo’s girls, lining up hand in hand, smiling at the audience as they left the stage. As Sontag wrote in that essay, ‘Camp taste is, above all, a mode of enjoyment, not judgment. Camp is generous, it wants to enjoy. . . . Camp is a tender feeling.’ ” —S.M.

Balenciaga

Photo by: Indigital

Balenciaga

“It was the first time women and men walked together in a unified show, and for Demna Gvasalia, it represented a conceptual and personal leap forward. Instead of merely imitating the heritage looks of Cristóbal Balenciaga, he’d dedicated R&D time to working on a high-tech computer-enabled process for molding tailoring for women and men alike. Bodies had been 3-D scanned, the ‘fittings’ were done in a computer file, and then molds were printed out. Progressive ideas are much needed in fashion today, on all kinds of levels. Demna Gvasalia’s mission to recode Balenciaga tailoring in the cyber age might not be a future solution—it still involves the use of synthetics, and you could argue that it negates the skills of the human hand. Nevertheless, the thinking behind this collection marks Gvasalia as a designer who wants to be an agent of change in the fashion industry, and who goes for social change, too. ‘I don’t want to be just a T-shirt-and-hoodie man. We sell them, of course—but I feel I have a responsibility to do it in a way which brings a message.’ Ethics x aesthetics. Sounds like a timely way forward.” —S.M.

Alexander Mcqueen

Photo by: Indigital

Alexander McQueen

“Among the catwalks and the commentariat, what we’ve been talking about is how to represent women. Femaleness is a spectrum, not a grab bag for definitive pronouncements about power or romanticism. Sarah Burton’s is a subtle woman’s voice speaking through these complexities. Shoot from one end of her collection—an impeccable female tuxedo—to the gowns at the finish, and you will see someone working through our climate of change. Her empathy and stunning couture-level skills went into a collection she described as being about ‘extreme nature. Metamorphosis. A soft armor for women.’ ” —S.M.

Sacai

Photo by: Getty

Sacai

“In this season, when so many designers have been fusing, hybridizing, and patchworking garments together, let’s take a moment to applaud the woman who started it all. Chitose Abe’s skill—apart from the ability to make one outfit out of parts of many garments—is knowing the right archetypes to call on at any given time. This ​Fall, as classics have become a subject du jour, she was yet again on point, polishing up her assemblages with menswear tweeds, trad rainwear, school​-​blazer stripes, banker-stripe shirting, navy blazers, and generic down jackets. The general effect was half-and-half, this time arranged on a vertical axis rather than back-to-front (a point humorously underscored by the unmatched footwear)​.​ This was a​ strong, graphic collection that will surely fly.” —S.M.

Photo by: Alessandro Garofalo / Indigital.tv

Chanel

“The contemplation of nature as a fashion show experience has been on Karl Lagerfeld’s mind for the last two shows in this place. He planted a formal French rose arbor in this venue for Couture, and grandiosely threw up the cliffs and roaring waterfalls of the Gorges du Verdon for his last ready-to-wear show. And, in between, there was his terrific Métiers d’Art show in Hamburg, the German seaport of his birth. À la recherche du temps perdu? Well, it wasn’t that in any literal sense. Still, as the lines of girls began treading purposefully through the moss-strewn glade, the first long, slim black coats struck a quintessentially Lagerfeldian note: the attenuated Edwardiana silhouette that has reflexively dashed off his pen for decades.”

Louis Vuitton

Photo by: Indigital

Louis Vuitton

“Space has been a recurring motif throughout Nicolas Ghesquière’s career; it’s animated some of his most imaginative, exciting work—remember the articulated C-3PO leggings? Here, he was operating in a much more grounded manner, though of course, this being Vuitton, the results were far from pedestrian. Metal chains and doodads elaborately trimmed cropped jackets; dense beadwork decorated the oddly asymmetrically draped halter tops for evening. Ghesquière must’ve liked the off-ness of that gesture. The models wore only one glove on their bag hand. Flat envelope bags and large totes printed with what looked like computer motherboard circuitry were the new developments on that front.” —N.P.

FILM

‘The Shape of Water’ Wins Best Picture as Oscars Project Diversity

Content Courtesy of: nytimes

Written by: BROOKS BARNES and CARA

• “The Shape of Water” won best picture, and Guillermo del Toro won best director for the film.

• “The Shape of Water” won best picture, and Guillermo del Toro won best director for the film.

• Frances McDormand won best actress for “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.” Gary Oldman won best actor for “Darkest Hour.” Allison Janney won best supporting actress. Sam Rockwell won best supporting actor.

• Ashley Judd, Salma Hayek and Annabella Sciorra — three of Harvey Weinstein’s accusers — took the stage and introduced a segment highlighting the importance of diversity in film.

“The Shape of Water” won best picture.

Credit by: Patrick T. Fallon for The New York Times

Fantasy from del Toro wins top Oscar.

LOS ANGELES — The 90th Academy Awards ceremony skittered between the serious and the silly on Sunday night, taking time both to acknowledge #MeToo and to hand out hot dogs at an adjacent movie theater, but the show ultimately emerged as a powerful call for inclusion and diversity in Hollywood.

Guillermo del Toro’s outcast parable, “The Shape of Water,” was honored as best picture, and Mr. del Toro won the best director Oscar. Jordan Peele collected the best original screenplay award for “Get Out,” a movie centered on racism in the liberal white suburbs. And Frances McDormand, winning best actress for her portrayal of a mother seeking justice for her murdered daughter in “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” made a dramatic stand for gender equality in Hollywood.

She thanked “every single person in this building” and her sister before asking the female nominees in the room to stand. “Look around,” she said. “We all have stories to tell and projects we need financed.”

Expected wins by Oldman and McDormand.

Frances McDormand asked all the female nominees to stand while accepting the award for best actress.

Credit by: Patrick T. Fallon for The New York TimesMs.

McDormand’s win was expected, as was Gary Oldman’s (“Darkest Hour”) for best actor.

“If I fall over, pick me up, because I’ve got some things to say,” Ms. McDormand said.

Ms. McDormand finished with, “I have two words to say: inclusion rider,” a reference to a practice by which stars add a clause to film contracts that insists on diversity on both sides of the camera.

Jodie Foster, appearing on crutches and joking that the reason was a run-in with Meryl Streep, presented best actress with Jennifer Lawrence, in lieu of last year’s best-actor winner, Casey Affleck. Mr. Affleck bypassed the ceremony amid continued criticism for settling sexual harassment suits in the past.

In a halting acceptance speech, Mr. Oldman thanked the film’s director and producers; Winston Churchill; his wife, Gisele Schmid; and his 99-year-old mother, who he said was home watching on the sofa. “Put the kettle on,” he said. “I’m bringing Oscar home.

”It was a democratic Oscars over all”.

Roger Deakins won an Oscar for best cinematography, for “Blade Runner 2049,” at long last.

Credit by: Patrick T. Fallon for The New York Times

Only two of the nine best picture nominees went home empty-handed: “Lady Bird” and “The Post.” The other seven collected at least one award each, preventing any one film from sweeping the ceremony.

Where to Stream the 2018 Oscar Winning Movies From “Coco” to “Get Out,” see how to watch the nominees at home with Watching, The New York Times’s TV and movie recommendation site.

Winners included legends who had never before won, among them James Ivory (“Call Me by Your Name”) and Roger A. Deakins (“Blade Runner 2049”), and first-time nominees like Jordan Peele, who landed best original screenplay for “Get Out,” and Allison Janney, a television stalwart who won over the film academy with her supporting work in the darkly comedic Tonya Harding biopic “I, Tonya.”

“I’ve been at this a long time,” said Mr. Deakins, a 14-time nominee. “Thank you. Thank you very much.” He started his career in the 1970s and was first nominated in 1995, for “The Shawshank Redemption.”

Guillermo del Toro accepting the award for best director.

Credit by: Patrick T. Fallon for The New York Times

‘I am an immigrant.’

Mr. del Toro’s best director honor was widely expected — he took the top prize at several preceding awards shows — and he was an omnipresent darling of the awards circuit, at one point bringing a case of tequila to an awards function. The win meant that Mr. del Toro had finally won the acceptance of Hollywood, after being looked down on as a horror director for much of his career.

“I am an immigrant,” an emotional Mr. del Toro started his acceptance speech by saying, continuing to note that art has the power to “erase the lines in the sand” between people of different ethnicities. “We should continue doing that when the world tells us to make them deeper.”

The best picture award was presented by Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, who because of a mix-up backstage by PwC, mistakenly announced last year’s best picture winner as “La La Land” instead of “Moonlight.”

“I want to dedicate to every young filmmaker — the youth who are showing us how things are done,” said Mr. del Toro when he accepted the award for best picture. “The Shape of Water” also won for Alexandre Desplat’s score and Paul Denham Austerberry’s production design.

‘Get Out’ and ‘Call Me by Your Name’ win screenplay awards.

Jordan Peele accepting the award for best original screenplay.

Credit by: Patrick T. Fallon for The New York Times

Mr. Peele, who wrote and directed “Get Out,” received a raucous standing ovation for winning best original screenplay, signaling the Hollywood establishment’s respect for his movie and also his arrival as a certified member of that elite group. He thanked his mother, who, he said, “Taught me to love even in the face of hate.”

Mr. Ivory, 89, a four-time nominee, won for best adapted screenplay for the gay romance “Call Me by Your Name.” All people, “whether straight or gay or somewhere in between,” can understand the emotions of a first love, Mr. Ivory said, reading from notes. (Mr. Ivory was previously nominated for directing “A Room With a View,” “Howards End” and “The Remains of the Day.”)

A #MeToo moment.

Activism and social politics were highlighted in a segment introduced by Ashley Judd, Salma Hayek and Annabella Sciorra, all of whom had gone public with allegations about enduring sexual harassment or worse at the hands of Harvey Weinstein.

The women recognized the seismic shift in Hollywood’s culture in recent months with the rise of #MeToo, and Ms. Judd spoke of the voices “joining in a mighty chorus that is finally saying Time’s Up.”

They were followed by an emotional video featuring Mira Sorvino, Sarah Silverman, Greta Gerwig, Geena Davis and Kumail Nanjiani, who injected a note of levity by noting that the box-office lucre enjoyed by recent diverse movies should be an incentive for Hollywood. “Don’t do it for society and representation,” he said, “Do it because you get rich, right?”

During their performance of the Oscar nominated song “Stand Up for Something,” from “Marshall,” Common and the singer Andra Day were joined on stage by 10 prominent activists, including Cecile Richards of Planned Parenthood; the labor leader and civil rights advocate Dolores Huerta; Bana Alabed, the 8-year-old Syrian refugee who documented the siege of Aleppo on Twitter; and Janet Mock, a transgender activist and television writer and host.

Photo “Remember Me” from “Coco” was performed at the Oscars. CreditPatrick T. Fallon for The New York TimesDisney wins another Oscar for animated feature.Kobe Bryant is now an Oscar winner: “Dear Basketball,” which Mr. Bryant made with the former Disney animator Glen Keane, overcame questions about Mr. Bryant’s past to win the trophy for best animated short — as some members of the audience exchanged incredulous looks. #MeToo activists had said that a 2003 sexual-assault case against Mr. Bryant was reason not to reward the movie. (The case was dismissed.)“As basketball players, we’re supposed to shut up and dribble,” Mr. Bryant said in an apparent reference to the Fox News host Laura Ingraham’s recent criticism of LeBron James for speaking out against President Trump. Mr. Bryant went on to thank his wife and daughters.Disney continued its Oscars dominance, as Pixar’s “Coco” was named best animated feature, Disney’s sixth straight victory in the category. “Representation matters!” shouted its co-director, Lee Unkrich, a reference to the characters and story line of the film, which is centered on Mexico’s Day of the Dead celebration.View

“Coco” also delivered the best song winner, “Remember Me,” written by Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez. “Not only are we diverse, but we are close to 50-50 for gender representation,” said Ms. Anderson-Lopez, noting her fellow song nominees. She said she looked forward to the day when “all the categories look like this one.”

Early awards are spread around.

Allison Janney winning for best supporting actress.

Credit by: Patrick T. Fallon for The New York Times

The first hour and a half of the Oscars ceremony honored a wide variety of films.

“Phantom Thread,” Paul Thomas Anderson’s period romance about an obsessive dressmaker, won for costume design. Best hairstyling and makeup went to the World War II drama “Darkest Hour.” The Oscar for production design was given to “The Shape of Water.”

“Dunkirk,” Christopher Nolan’s layered war epic, collected Oscars for sound mixing, sound editing and film editing. “Blade Runner 2049” proved victorious in the visual effects category.

As expected, Ms. Janney completed her awards-season winning streak.

“I did it all by myself,” Ms. Janney said, arriving at the microphone, to prolonged applause. She then added, “Nothing is further from the truth,” and ran through a list of names at light speed.

“A Fantastic Woman,” from Chile, was named best foreign film. Rita Moreno, who won a supporting actress Oscar in 1962 for “West Side Story,” presented the prize. In keeping with the telecast’s theme of looking back at celebrated performances, a clip highlighted Ms. Moreno’s performance in “West Side Story.”

Netflix film wins best documentary.

“Icarus” winning best documentary feature.

Credit by: Patrick T. Fallon for The New York Times

In a surprise, the Oscar for best documentary went to “Icarus,” a Netflix film about systematic Russian doping at the Olympics. (Russia was banned from the recent Pyeongchang Games, though some of its athletes were still allowed to compete.) It was Netflix’s first Oscar for a feature film, having won last year’s prize for best documentary short, for “White Helmets.”

The expected winner had been “Faces Places,” a lighter, more nuanced film about Agnès Varda — known as the grandmother of the French new wave — and the environmental photographer JR. Netflix mounted a lavish campaign for “Icarus,” raising eyebrows in the rather staid documentary filmmaking community.

Jimmy Kimmel addresses scandals as show opens.

Jimmy Kimmel opening the show.

Credit by: Patrick T. Fallon for The New York Times

The first Oscars of Hollywood’s post-Harvey Weinstein era took care of its serious business first. As the 90th Academy Awards got underway on Sunday night, the host, Jimmy Kimmel, addressed the sexual harassment scandals that have rocked Hollywood in recent months.

“That’s the kind of men we need more of in this town,” Mr. Kimmel said, pointing to a colossal Oscar statue on the stage, noting that the figure “keeps his hands where you can see them” and has “no penis at all.”

He then grew serious for a moment and talked about the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements, which started in Hollywood after the revelations about Mr. Weinstein and have reverberated across the globe, challenging the entertainment industry to make good on its promise to reform itself. “The world is watching us,” he said. “We need to set an example.”

With that, the ceremony swerved into its usual piquancy, lightly teasing nominees like Ms. Streep, up for her 21st Oscar, and naming Sam Rockwell best supporting actor for his performance as a racist dimwit of a police officer in “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.” He thanked “everyone who’s ever looked at a billboard.”

A show with a lot of ground to cover.

Mira Sorvino and Ashley Judd on the Red Carpet.

Credit by: Monica Almeida for The New York Times

Rarely had more pressure been placed on an Oscar telecast. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences had the burden of trying to keep ratings from falling, while celebrating films that have, for the most part, not been widely seen. The ceremony was expected to acknowledge the appalling sexual harassment scandals that have engulfed Hollywood in recent months — and then go back to gazing lovingly at the history of moviemaking to mark Oscar’s 90th birthday.

Other conflicting pressures included poking fun at last year’s envelope mix-up, which found “La La Land” mistakenly named best picture instead of “Moonlight,” while taking the recognition of cinematic achievements like sound mixing and film editing supremely seriously.

The tonal tug-of-war between frothy self-celebration and serious discussion of the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements made for some awkward red carpet moments. ABC veered from a raucous interview with Taraji P. Henson, who was asked about her recent action film “Proud Mary,” to Mira Sorvino and Ms. Judd, both of whom came forward last year with allegations of sexual harassment against Mr. Weinstein.

“I want people to know that this movement isn’t stopping,” Ms. Sorvino said about Time’s Up, an initiative started by Hollywood women and focused on fighting systemic sexual harassment across industries. Ms. Judd, who was scheduled to present an award during the ceremony, said she was grateful that women who speak out about mistreatment are no longer being “disbelieved, minimized, shamed.”

A minute later, the red carpet hosts were back to squealing over the gowns chosen by stars like Whoopi Goldberg and Jennifer Garner.

An uneventful red carpet.

Several women deeply involved with Time’s Up, including Ava DuVernay and Shonda Rhimes, explained why there were no overt displays from the group on the red carpet.

“We are not an awards show protest group,” Ms. DuVernay said at a meeting with a small group of reporters last week. “We made a conscious choice not to do that again.”

Viewers wondered if a celebrity would turn the questions around on Ryan Seacrest, the host of E!’s red carpet coverage. He has been accused of sexual harassment, claims he and his network, backed by a third-party investigation, have vigorously denied. But no such confrontation was broadcast — though Ms. Henson did fix him with a pointed stare that was widely interpreted as such — and he did not address the accusations. His interviews with celebrities stuck to the typical fare of fashion and film, though according to US Weekly, none of the best actress nominees stopped to speak with him. An article in The Hollywood Reporter on Sunday said the E! broadcast would run on a 30-second tape delay.

In the two months since Time’s Up officially began, the group has amassed $21 million for its legal defense fund and, said Tina Tchen, a lawyer heading that initiative, has fielded 1,700 requests for assistance from landscapers, government workers, police officers, prison guards, and hotel and catering workers. (Some 1,250 have been connected with lawyers.) A sister initiative has sprung up in Britain; a group of male allies has formed; a partnership with StoryCorps, the story-collecting organization, has been forged; and the process of making the group a nonprofit foundation has begun. “We are global at this point,” Ms. Rhimes said.

MUSIC

Written by: Ilana Kaplan

Content Courtesy of: independent.co.uk

Spotify and Smirnoff have released the "Smirnoff Equalizer" - a feature that maps out a user's listening habits by gender and could change how you listen to music.

The tool has been released just in time for International Women's Day, which is Thursday March 8.

Like Spotify's percentage breakdowns of artists, songs and albums played, the equaliser reveals the percentage of music you listen to in terms of female versus male.

For people who listen to more male artists than female, Spotify will create a more gender-balanced playlist.

According to a press release, the idea for the equaliser stems from the fact that there was a lack of female representation in Spotify's 2017 Year in Music statistics.

Only two female artists were featured in the top 10 songs and no women were found in the top 10 internationally streamed records.

Ed Sheeran, Luis Fonsi & Daddy Yankee, The Chainsmokers and DJ Khaled took the top five spots for most globally streamed songs, while Sheeran, Drake, Kendrick Lamar, The Weeknd and Post Malone were in the top five most streamed albums worldwide.

Spotify's latest tool is a step in the right direction when it comes to music.

The equaliser is a pretty cool concept in terms of gender equality and expanding your musical tastes.

In February, Spotify filed an IPO to go public, so there will likely be more news coming from the streaming service soon.

ART

Written by:  Andy Battaglia

Content Courtesy of: artnews.com

The Shed’s Commissions for 2019 Opening Involve Gerhard Richter, No I.D., Steve McQueen, Trisha Donnelly, Steve Reich, Arvo Pärt, Many More

The Shed under construction as seen from the High Line, February 2018.

Credit by: ED LEDERMAN

The Shed, the new multidisciplinary performing-arts center slated to open on Manhattan’s booming West Side in the spring of 2019, announced new commissions for its inaugural season at a press event this afternoon. By way of a panel discussion convened in a room overlooking construction of the behemoth building on West 30th Street in Hudson Yards, talk turned quickly to courting diverse audiences and mixing up artistic modes. “If the range of artists you present represents the range of society, then you have a chance,” said Alex Poots, the Shed’s artistic director and CEO.

The first commission for next year will be Soundtrack of America, a work meant to address the history of African-American music from 1680 to the present as conceived by the filmmaker Steve McQueen, record producer Quincy Jones, New York University professor Maureen Mahon, and Dion “No I.D.” Wilson, whose credits as a hip-hop producer include work with Jay-Z and Kanye West. Charting such a lineage is important because “history can be lost,” No I.D. said in a video presenting the project (with Jones, ever-present in the news of late, in a wild silk smoking jacket). As described by Mahon, the work will address music ranging from spirituals and jazz to techno and house—”we may even get to trap at the end,” she added.

Other commissioned projects include a collaboration matching the painter Gerhard Richter with the musicians Steve Reich and Arvo Pärt; a show of work by the artist Trisha Donnelly; a performance conceived in part by the poet Anne Carson on the subject of Marilyn Monroe and Helen of Troy; Dragon Spring Phoenix Rise, a piece by Chen Shi-Zheng, Jonathan Aibel, Glenn Berger, Akram Khan, and Tim Yip; and a survey show to be the largest thus far in New York for the artist Agnes Denes, whose work will fill two large galleries in what Denes herself called “a funky building that inhales and exhales.”

Also among the announcements was “Open Call,” a large-scale commissioning program for “early-career artists from all disciplines who live or work in New York City,” and “Dis Obey,” a workshop program for teenagers from around town. In addition, Hans Ulrich Obrist was named the Shed’s senior program adviser, and naming rights were granted for the Shed’s main hall, to be ordained the McCourt after a $45 million gift from board member Frank H. McCourt.

ADVERTISING AND BRANDS

Written by: Garett Sloane

Content Courtesy of: adage.com

OVER SHARING

A growing number of people are using Facebook less or leaving altogether. Poisoned politics are only part of the problem

Brad Stulberg gets constant messages from Facebook to come back. It asks him to check in and see what he's been missing since he stopped visiting in January.

"Facebook texts me five days a week," says Stulberg, 31, a writer from Oakland, California. "I get emails from them daily. It's supremely annoying."

Stulberg is trying to take a break from the social network because, he says, the "cost on my mental health felt too great." Facebook was pulling him away from real life and it felt like an addiction.

Yet it's Facebook that just can't seem to quit him, trying to lure him back with notifications of birthdays that he hasn't commented on or photos of friends that he hasn't seen.

There's an irony here that isn't lost on Stulberg. Like a growing number of people, he got fed up with the negativity that has beset Facebook in the form of Russian trolls, fake-news sites and hate-mongering by people who use it as a tool for their agendas. To bring him back, Facebook is resurfacing its strengths in shared baby photos and vicarious vacations with friends.

But understanding the problem is a long way from fundamentally fixing it. Last Friday, Facebook said it had given up on one of its attempts to do just that.

'Anxious and divided'

When Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted his yearly New Year's resolution, previously usually a cute personal goal like learning Chinese or wearing a tie every day, he instead spoke to something more existential about Facebook. He indicated that he knows the site can be a source of discontent and pledged changes so it inspires a greater sense of well-being among users.

"The world feels anxious and divided, and Facebook has a lot of work to do," he wrote, "whether it's protecting our community from abuse and hate, defending against interference by nation states, or making sure that time spent on Facebook is time well spent."

In the last quarter of 2017, time spent on Facebook every day declined by 5 percent, or 50 million hours, a drop the company attributed to its intentional efforts to prioritize more meaningful content. But it also saw the number of North Americans on the platform fall for the first time, to 184 million from 185 million in the third quarter.

That didn't mean trouble for the ad business—far from it. Facebook finished the year with $40 billion in revenue, up 47 percent from 2016. Even as people spent less time on Facebook in the fourth quarter, marketers spent more money there—47 percent more.

Facebook's issues haven't affected brands' appetite for it, says Pivotal Research analyst Brian Wieser. "It has not gotten to the point where a brand is toxic by association for being there."

And practically speaking, where is there to go? YouTube is enduring its own challenges with marketers, some of whose ads have wound up attached to reprehensible videos. Twitter has a reputation for catering to bots and Russian trolls too; the political dialog there isn't much different than on Facebook.

In the meantime, however, disenchanted and disappointed Facebook users are becoming harder to miss. One 31-year-old freelance ad director recently spent a month laboriously inspecting every post he made on Facebook over the past decade. He deleted everything, although he kept the account because apps like Spotify use his Facebook credentials to sign him in.

"I did it to see if there was anything I would miss, and there was nothing of value," the ad director says, speaking on condition of anonymity because he works in the business and doesn't want to jeopardize future job prospects with brands that buy on Facebook. "I didn't even see it as a record of anything."

"Ten years of usage is a lot," he adds. "It is hard to detach from something you use every day." But for him at least, it's worth it.

Facebook says notifications like those that Stulberg gets are meant to be informative. "There are many reasons why users might get notifications from Facebook, a Facebook spokesman says. "We're always looking for ways to help people access their accounts more quickly and easily especially when there are notifications from friends that they may have missed. People can always manage whether or not they receive these types of messages."

More broadly, Facebook says it's working hard to improve.

"We know we have work to do to make Facebook a better place for people and businesses to connect," the spokesman says. "That's why we've recently made adjustments to News Feed. When it comes to the safety, security, and integrity of our platform, there is nothing we take more seriously. With over 1.4 billion people on Facebook every day, six million active advertisers, and more people and businesses joining each day around the world, we know we have a responsibility to make Facebook a safe and civil environment."

One of the first changes Facebook made, even before Zuckerberg's resolution, was to decrease how often it shows "viral videos." Sure, people watch them, and maybe even share them, but do they talk about them? Often they don't, according to Facebook research. They keep scrolling, deriving little value from the service beyond killing time and, Facebook research suggests, giving little in return to advertisers.

Facebook is also going after publishers that share misleading news and employ clickbait tactics to increase views. It even promised to dim the visibility of news, in general, in favor of personal posts.

"When we use social media to connect with people we care about, it can be good for our well-being," Zuckerberg said in January as he announced that shift. "We can feel more connected and less lonely, and that correlates with long-term measures of happiness and health. On the other hand, passively reading articles or watching videos—even if they're entertaining or informative—may not be as good."

"They compromised our democracy." Mandy Hoffman, 42

On Friday, though, the company said it was abandoning an experiment in separating professional publishers' and brands' posts from the main News Feed. The idea was to let engaging content from friends and family shine through. Users in six countries did not like it, Facebook said, adding that other changes to the News Feed that "prioritize meaningful social interactions" are working better.

"Mostly I just got tired of Facebook. There's nothing to do there except scroll." Nairobi Williams, 19

The chorus of critics, meanwhile, is steadily gaining volume. It isn't only personal users and it isn't only politics: Complaints date back before the 2016 election exposed the depths of abuse infecting social media. Two months earlier, Facebook told major advertisers and ad agencies that it had been miscalculating metrics it gave brands on their videos' performance. Although it didn't directly affect paid ads, the revelation set off a reckoning that is still being felt as Facebook and other digital platforms submit to greater scrutiny of their ad delivery and measurement.

"I didn't realize on social media how much natural joy from surprises are taken away because you know everything." Brock Lile, 31

Then, of course, it emerged that fraudulent headlines and bad actors had made easy work of Facebook users during the presidential campaign for a mix of profit and international politics. Soon after the election's surprise result, Zuckerberg called it a "pretty crazy idea" that Facebook had any impact. Multiple investigations later, it's become pretty clear that the deluge of disinformation targeted to U.S. voters on social media did have an effect, from online acrimony to real-world protests. And Facebook users felt the sting afterward.

Mandy Hoffman, 42, of Memphis, Tennessee, stopped posting to Facebook in the fall, and then quit for good last month. "It made me nervous, honestly, and not just Facebook but Twitter also, social media in general, allowed a lot to pass through in terms of the election," Hoffman says. "They compromised our democracy."

Her social interactions during the election were certainly meaningful, a goal of Facebook's fix-it project, but not in a good way. For years, Facebook had been a lifeline to her family and friends in Arkansas, Hoffman says. But during the election, she started seeing posts that she didn't want to see from those same family and friends. She is a Democrat; many of her Facebook friends were more conservative. "I discovered a lot of things about those people that I kind of wish I could unknow," Hoffman says. "I hate that one old elementary school teacher is racist."

The comedian Jim Carrey last month said he was quitting Facebook and selling his shares because Facebook "profited from Russian interference in our elections and they're still not doing enough to stop it."

And it goes beyond the election now too.

At the end of February, David Hogg, a survivor of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, said he was taking a break from Facebook. Like YouTube, the platform had become a channel for trolls and fake-news peddlers to claim that Hogg and fellow students are actors. Hogg and others were being harassed for advocating for gun control, and he said he was receiving death threats on Facebook.

Actor Chelsea Peretti went on Twitter to call out the lies that infiltrated Facebook after the shooting, and said she was quitting the service. "Why doesn't Snopes partner with Facebook," Peretti posted on Twitter. "I'm quitting it anyway, but they should put a check by verified news." Peretti did not return requests for comment, but she does appear to have quit Facebook. Her account is now inactive.

In fact, Facebook tried to implement new fact-checking measures last year by teaming with PolitiFact and FactCheck.org to vet news and apply "disputed" labels to dubious posts. Facebook also said it would survey readers to determine what news sources were most credible and would then prioritize those publishers.

But the results thus far seem meager, and all the misadventures and manipulations have hurt confidence in the social network. "There's a certain sloppiness. Facebook has been sloppy," says Pivotal's Wieser. "Whether it's the political ads or problems with ad metrics or how to tell what users care about, we're seeing the consequences playing out."

Reducing publishers' prevalence in the News Feed may turn down the politics for Facebook users. But what happens when your own network is the problem? "My childhood friends would share these memes that were complete and total lies," Hoffman says. "And the banter between family members that couldn't agree on things—it was messy."

There's another question for Facebook: What if the "network effect," the self-reinforcing dynamic that encouraged a cascade of connections around the world to open accounts since Facebook's founding in 2004, has a ceiling? What if beyond the politics and everything else, Facebook just gets boring?

"Whether it's the political ads or problems with ad metrics or how to tell what users care about, we're seeing the consequences playing out." Brian Wieser, Pivotal Research

About a month ago, 19-year-old Nairobi Williams deleted his Facebook account. Facebook gives people two weeks before the information associated with the account is fully purged, offering them a chance to reactivate. He didn't. "I permanently deleted," Williams says. "It's gone. It's not coming back. I'm never signing back on."

Williams says he was partly moved to leave Facebook because of the Russian trolls and election meddling, which made him wonder whether he was susceptible to being influenced too. "But mostly I just got tired of Facebook," Williams says. "There's nothing to do there except just scroll. And you see the same posts just constantly."

For some people, signing off of Facebook isn't easy. "The first few weeks is literally like coming off a drug," says Brock Lile, 31, who quit Facebook around the time of the 2016 election, overwhelmed by the nastiness. "My mind was programmed to check Facebook. Even after I deleted the app, I would randomly pick up my phone and click where the app used to be, just out of habit."

Now he says his general happiness has improved. "I didn't realize on social media how much natural joy from surprises are taken away because you know everything," Lile says, referring to milestones like births that he used to see on Facebook.

Without Facebook, Lile says he's finding the kind of meaningful interaction that Zuckerberg wants the social network to provide.

"I get to be excited with people in the moments," Lile says. "It's genuine and not a replay of what I already read on the News Feed."

Photo credits by: Mandy Hoffman, Nairobi Williams, Brock Lile and Twitter.

INNOVATION

Artificial intelligence could supercharge hacking and election meddling, study warns

AI programs can make it easier for trolls with minimal technical skills to make fake videos, audio, researchers warn

Written by: Alyssa Newcomb

Content Courtesy of:  nbcnews.com

In the 2020 election, you might not be able to believe your eyes or your ears due to advances in artificial intelligence that researchers warn could be used in the next wave of election meddling.

The rise of AI-enhanced software will allow people with little technical skills to easily produce audio and video that makes it nearly impossible to distinguish between what is real and what isn't, according to a report released Wednesday from researchers led by Oxford University and Cambridge University.

Entitled "The Malicious Use of Artificial Intelligence: Forecasting, Prevention and Mitigation," the report was released to sound the alarm about how artificial intelligence is becoming easier to use — and could become a key tool in the arsenal of foreign operatives seeking to spread disinformation. The report was authored by 26 of the world's leading researchers in artificial intelligence.

"There is no obvious reason why the outputs of these systems could not become indistinguishable from genuine recordings, in the absence of specially designed authentication measures," the authors warn. "Such systems would in turn open up new methods of spreading disinformation and impersonating others."

While the industry celebrates the positive effects AI can have on the future, the researchers warned that equal consideration must be given to the dark side of AI. They hope the community will mobilize now to mitigate future detrimental effects of the technology.

Artificial intelligence will "set off a cat and mouse game between attackers and defenders, with the attackers seeming more human-like," said Miles Brundage, a research fellow at Oxford University's Future of Humanity Institute and one of the authors of the report.

The report was a joint project between a group of researchers and technologists including Oxford University’s Future of Humanity Institute, Cambridge University’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, and OpenAI, a non-profit AI research company. Other contributors include the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based digital rights group that advocates for privacy and an open internet, as well as the Center for a New American Security, a Washington think tank focused on national security.

AI-BOOSTED TROLLS

The efforts by world governments and politically motivated hackers to infiltrate computer systems and manipulate online discourse have been exposed as effective but also labor intensive.

The Internet Research Agency, the Russia-backed group named in Special Counsel Robert Mueller's indictment last Friday, allegedly used identity theft, social media manipulation and virtual private networks to launch their influence campaigns in the United States.

But researchers said artificial intelligence makes launching a disinformation campaign even easier for humans.

"Artificially intelligent systems don’t merely reach human levels of performance but significantly surpass it," Brundage said.

AI doesn't just make these attacks easier to execute. It also makes them easier to replicate, Brundage said, allowing the technology to work more efficiently than humans to identify targets and launch attacks.

FAKE VIDEO ON DEMAND

Some of this technology is already out in the public and being used to create videos.

Deepfakes gained notoriety online earlier this month by allowing people with limited technical skills to create fantasy pornography videos. These are created using AI-enhanced software that can take any face, including those of celebrities, children, or an ex-lover, and put them on the bodies of people in previously recorded videos.

The videos have cropped up on pornography websites, with one popular destination, Pornhub, reportedly vowing to crack down on them, since they fall under the category of non-consensual content.

"There has been a night-and-day transition between a few years ago and now," Brundage said, speaking of the advances. "It's becoming easy to get copies of these systems. Deepfakes was a proof of concept posted on Reddit that was made easier and easier to use. Large amounts of people were able to download it."

A program as easy to download and use as Deepfakes could also theoretically be used in other instances. With Parkland, Florida students being pelted with attacks from trolls claiming they're crisis actors, AI technology could be used to spread false information about their identities through fake videos and audio, furthering a hurtful campaign of misinformation.

Technology to mimic peoples' voices is already being commercialized, Brundage said. It takes just a small amount of training data to teach machines how to talk like someone. With President Donald Trump and other high profile people, that training data is already out there, ready for anyone with nefarious intent to make the most of it.

Some politicians have taken notice. Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) recently spoke out about this kind of technology.

While the sea of disinformation continues to be a game of whack-a-mole, the report also warned of denial of information attacks. Instead of run-of-the-mill bots, which have tell-tale signs, these attacks will be fueled by artificially intelligent bots that can expertly elude detection. They'll slam information channels with false information, making it difficult to cut through what's clutter and find the truth.

While researchers, including Brundage, are sounding the alarm, they're also hopeful the AI community will take notice now to institute measures to keep AI from being exploited. That includes learning from the best practices of older fields that can be used for good and evil, such as computer security.

"It’s one thing to say this could happen, another to prevent it and lessen the damage," Brundage said. "We need better detection of fake multimedia, more research approaches to make systems less vulnerable to attack, and changes to some norms."

March is in full swing and we're taking it all in. As always, WATCH THIS SPACE.