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Vanechka's avatar

Great one, Tom. It's an important topic. I've been thinking about 'criticism as creative act' and a form of art itself. And I think it doesn't matter if you have "a professional critic education", it should be more punky and supportive. I mean people should be open to constructive criticism as well as ready to give it. It benefits everyone in a long run. And I think it doesn't necessarily mean saying "how bad things are" or "why this is so good", it just signaling, telling each other what is worth paying attention to.

The internet allows that, especially the changes we are seeing now - more independent artists and (probably) more independent critics (I think curators are also critics in some way). Because the amount of information grows substantially it gets hard to navigate it so we need, every one of us, signal to each other as human beings what we like and what is worth our precious attention more than other things.

One thing I do not completely agree with is algorithms. The thing is it's more complex than showing "similar items" to "similar users". It's a pretty interesting field in terms of the underlying mathematics and stuff. E.g. they calculate latent variables for products / users - hidden features defined by abstract numbers, some complex matrix multiplication and etc. It's a developing field (RecSys) and I believe it has a brighter future than we tend to think now.

I agree that recommender systems (algos) in their current state are mostly garbage and just optimized to suck money from our wallets or hold our attention, but that could change, I really want to believe in that, although maybe they would never work well for recommending true Art.

Cheers,

John

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Lynn Childress's avatar

It is also possible to start writing film criticism, earn nothing at the beginning, and end up being the lead film critic for the Chicago Tribune. I cannot tell you how Mike Wilmington made that transition, but I can tell you the story of his beginning as a critic. When I met him at a dive called The Plaza in Madison, Wisconsin, he was writing film reviews for the Madison Press Connection, a radical newspaper created by striking employees of the city’s two mainstream papers. His compensation consisted of two free passes to the Majestic Theater in exchange for writing a review. I was the fortunate beneficiary of the second pass. After the film, we would go to The Plaza, order a pitcher of beer, and talk about the film. Then bleary-eyed, he would stagger home to write the review, which I would edit the next day (it was the beginning of my editing career). His reviews were eccentric, at times poetic, but perfect for a paper that was challenging the status quo.

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