Link About It: This Week’s Picks

AI-made music, the world's thinnest paper, missing NYC street sounds and more from around the internet

NYPL’s “Missing Sounds of New York” Playlist The latest in a line of digital offerings provided by the New York Public Library, the strangely emotional Missing Sounds of New York exists as an “auditory love letter to New Yorkers.” Beginning with chatter and clanking turnstiles, “To See An Underground Show” features those familiar screeching brakes and a little subway performance, while other tracks include “Serenity …

Exponential Improvements in AI-Made Music Prompt Copyright Concerns

San Francisco-based AI research organization OpenAI released its music-generating code Jukebox this week. Complex code synthesizes hours upon hours of music, usually from one artist or one genre, and reproduces tracks that touch on the signature sounds listeners recognize most. The resulting tracks—which replicate the essence of music by Jay-Z, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra and others—are obviously AI-made, but worrying. With repetitive learning, AI could …

20 Artists Contribute to Dropbox Paper’s Free “Indoors Zine”

It’s Nice That and Dropbox Paper fielded contributions from 20 illustrators, photographers and designers for a project they dubbed Indoors Zine, a collection “about the great indoors entirely made from home.” From lessons in meditation to illustrations of quarantine outfits, photographic illusions and sticker-inspired spreads, Indoors Zine provides entertainment and distraction—for readers and the artists involved. Our favorite, Clarice Tudor’s “Isolation Party Tips,” breaks downs …