Cultureteca 01.12.19

On Monday LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton announced that it had agreed to buy the iconic jeweler Tiffany & Co. for $135 per share in cash, a deal which values Tiffany at approximately $16.2 billion. The deal – which is subject to the approval of Tiffany’s shareholders and is expected to close in the middle of next year – will be the biggest ever in the luxury sector. LVMH confirmed its interest in Tiffany towards the end of October, with an initial bid valuing the jeweler at nearly $14.5 billion. While Tiffany argued that the offer significantly undervalued the company, in November LVMH gained access to Tiffany’s books as it raised its bid towards $16 billion. Meanwhile Tiffany chief executive Alessandro Bogliolo paved the way for a deal by arguing that customers care about beauty and sustainability rather than the brand’s ownership.

Tiffany was founded in 1837 by the jeweler Charles Lewis Tiffany, who opened a stationary and fancy goods store in Lower Manhattan. The company swiftly won renown for its Blue Book mail order catalogue and its elaborate selection of aristocratic diamonds. In 1878 it acquired the Tiffany Yellow Diamond, one of the largest yellow diamonds ever discovered; in 1886 Charles Lewis Tiffany introduced the Tiffany Setting, a six-pronged diamond engagement ring; and in 1940 Tiffany moved to its flagship store on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 57th Street in Midtown Manhattan. The brand remains a cultural icon for the novella and film Breakfast at Tiffany’s – which on the silver screen starred a Givenchy-clad Audrey Hepburn, who as Holly Golightly walked the morning streets eating pastries and gazing into the Fifth Avenue window – and for its distinctive robin egg blue packaging. The deal strengthens LVMH’s presence in the United States, adding to a stable of brands which includes Dior, Givenchy, Fendi, Guerlain, and Dom Pérignon, and earlier this year incorporated the fashion house Fenty founded by the musician Rihanna.

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Ahead of next week’s annual United Nations Climate Change Conference, where world leaders will meet and seek to step up their commitments in accord with the Paris climate agreement, this week a United Nations Emissions Gap Report showed that greenhouse gas emissions are still rising precipitously. The Paris agreement set a goal of keeping the increase in the global average temperature to ‘well below’ 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, seen as a tipping point above which the world will find itself locked into a pattern of rising sea levels, frequent floods, heatwaves, and wildfires, crop failure, and depleted water resources. Recognising the risks of even a 2 degree rise in the global temperature, the Paris agreement also pledged to ‘pursue efforts’ to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Countries determine for themselves the measures they will take in order to meet these goals, and their contributions are not legally binding, but so far of the 195 signatories of the Paris agreement, 187 countries have ratified it in some form, though the agreement has been rocked by the United States’ intended withdrawal.

Instead of reducing our greenhouse gas emissions however, the United Nations Emissions Gap Report shows that in 2018 emissions rose to a record high of 55.3 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. That is in line with an annual 1.5% rise in greenhouse gas emissions over the past decade, and it keeps the world on course for a devastating temperature rise of 3.2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. To conform with the Paris agreement, emissions must now drop ever more sharply: by 2.7% per year between 2020 and 2030 in order to meet the 2 degrees Celsius goal, and by a heady 7.6% per year if we are to meet the aspiration of 1.5 degrees Celsius. The report notes that the G20 – nineteen leading countries plus the European Union, who together account for 78% of global greenhouse gas emissions – are taking steps to meet the limited Cancun pledges set out in 2010, while calling on them to set bolder targets and implement clearer measures for reducing emissions.

Meanwhile the World Meteorological Organisation released its own bulletin showing that the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is also rising. Overall levels of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide – which are responsible for approximately 66%, 17%, and 6% of the heating effect of the atmosphere – increased in 2018 to record highs, beyond the average annual rate of increase over the past decade. The abundance of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere now stands at 147% of the pre-industrial level, while for methane and nitrous oxide the figures are 259% and 123%. The measurements were coordinated by the WMO’s Global Atmosphere Watch Programme. Petteri Taalas, the WMO secretary-general, said ‘There is no sign of a slowdown, let alone a decline, despite all the commitments under the Paris agreement on climate change. We need to increase the level of ambition for the sake of the future welfare of mankind’, while the UN Emissions Gap Report called its summary findings ‘bleak’, still recognising areas of political and technological progress.

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The High Note Global Prize has been created to celebrate artists who have shown an enduring commitment to social justice. Devised by David Clark – an entrepreneur who specialises in cause-brands and humanitarian initiatives, and worked closely with Nelson Mandela, Muhammad Ali, and Amnesty International before founding David Clark Cause to facilitate leading cause projects – the prize is part of the High Note Global Initiative, in collaboration with the Human Rights office of the United Nations.

On Tuesday, Cyndi Lauper was announced as the inaugural recipient of the High Note Global Prize, for her career-long commitment to LBGTQ rights and her co-founding in 2008 of True Colors United, a nonprofit organisation which seeks to address the issue of youth homelessness with a focus on young LBGTQ people. Lauper will receive the award on United Nations Human Rights Day, 10 December, in a special presentation by Kesha as part of the ninth annual Home for the Holidays benefit concert. The concert will take place at The Novo in Los Angeles, and Lauper will be joined by a lineup of musicians, comics, and celebrities including Belinda Carlisle, Billy Porter, Henry Rollins, Margaret Cho, and Marilyn Manson, with all proceeds going to True Colors United.

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Whether its sampling her own internet browsing habits, exploring the nature of social media data mining as an inherent part of her song, or creating a singing artificial intelligence using a fourteen-piece choir and vocal snippets from friends, Holly Herndon is always at the forefront of discussions when it comes to the intersection of technology and music. So it was fitting this week that she joined the debate around the future of music and potential uses and misuses of artificial intelligence, spurred by Grimes with contributions from Devon Welsh, Zola Jesus, and Joanna Pollock. Herndon notes some of the ways in which artificial intelligence can cut costs and ‘augment the producers palette’, while quoting her collaborator Mat Dryhurst who says ‘the more music becomes abundant, the more purpose becomes scarce’. She emphasises, ‘I’m not worried about robot overlords. I’m worried about democratically unaccountable transnational companies training us all to understand culture like a robot or narrow AI’. Herndon worries that ‘The way things appear to be headed, most AI is just capitalism on speed’, closing with a call for an ‘interdependent music’.

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In other topical news on the theme of artificial intelligence, this week the South Korean Go master Lee Se-dol announced his retirement from professional Go competition, citing the invincibility of contemporary AI programs. Lee Se-dol is one of the most successful Go players in the modern history of the strategic board game, with eighteen international titles, second only to Lee Chang-ho, and a dominant spell despite a short break in the late 2000s.

With 361 points on the Go board, compared to chess which has just 64 spaces, and with more possible game configurations than there are atoms in the universe, Go was long thought beyond the reach of computer programs, and until 2015 had never been able to compete at the professional dan level without handicaps. However in 2016, Google DeepMind’s AlphaGo program challenged Lee to a five-game Go match, and the computer triumphed 4-1. Lee had predicted a 5-0 or 4-1 victory in his favour prior to the start of the match, but instead had to settle for a solitary win in game four after a so-called ‘divine move’ handed him an unexpected advantage. Lee remains the only player to have beaten AlphaGo in professional competition, with the program’s successor, the self-taught AlphaZero, currently regarded as the game’s best player. In 2017, AlphaZero beat the world’s best chess program after just four hours of learning. Announcing his retirement, Lee Se-dol said:

‘With the debut of AI in Go games, I’ve realized that I’m not at the top even if I become the number one through frantic efforts. Even if I become the number one, there is an entity that cannot be defeated.’

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Friday brought the release of remastered, deluxe, and super deluxe editions of 1999, the classic Prince album. A record that bound nuclear anxiety and the first real thrust of Prince’s technological fetishism with familiar themes of lust and sex, and saw its steely funk core pixellated by synthesizers and the prominent use of the Linn LM-1 drum machine, the Rolling Stone Album Guide suggests ‘1999 may be Prince’s most influential album: its synth-and-drum machine-heavy arrangements codified the Minneapolis sound that loomed over mid-80s R&B and pop, not to mention the next two decades’ worth of electro, house, and techno’. 1999 proved a breakthrough for Prince: peaking at number nine, it was his first top-ten album on the Billboard 200 and the fifth-best-selling album of 1983; ‘Little Red Corvette’ reached number six on the Billboard Hot 100, his highest-ranking chart position in the United States; the videos for ‘1999’ and ‘Little Red Corvette’ played in heavy rotation on MTV; and for ‘International Lover’, Prince became a Grammy nominee.

Already a double album sprawling and unfolding across more than seventy minutes, the super deluxe edition of 1999 now offers over five CDs or ten LPs all of the audio material that Prince issued officially around 1982, the year of the record’s release, plus twenty-three previously unissued studio tracks recorded between November 1981 and January 1983. In addition, the set unearths the second of two live performances recorded in Detroit on 30 November, 1982, as part of the 1999 tour: the first live performance of the night has circulated among fans, but when Prince came twice he often came especially hard. A DVD provides footage of another unreleased concert from the 1999 tour, recorded a month later on December 29 at the Houston Summit. The package is replete with handwritten lyrics, photographs, and extensive liner notes. 1999 with all of its vault material is available to stream now, and the expanded record has received near flawless reviews in Rolling Stone, The New York Times, and Pitchfork among others.

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At the Valencia Trinidad Alfonso on Sunday morning, Joshua Cheptegei smashed the 10 km road record. His time of 26:38 bettered the previous record, set in 2010 by Kenya’s Leonard Patrick Komon, by six seconds. The world record caps a stellar year for the Ugandan athlete, who won gold over 10 km at the World Cross Country Championships in Aarhus, Denmark in March, before claiming his first world track title over 10,000 metres at the climax of the World Athletics Championships in Doha in October. Cheptegei could already boast the world record over 15 km: a rarely held road race that Cheptegei nevertheless completes regularly at the annual Zevenheuvelenloop in Nijmigen, last year running a record time of 41:05.

Cheptegei ran the first half of the race in Valencia with pacemakers, and after 5 km he was a second shy of world record pace, picking up the tempo over a solitary remainder. Another Ugandan athlete, Kevin Bett, finished second in a time of 28:19, while Mohammad Reza Abootorabi of Sweden was third in 28:35. In fact Valencia, where the focus is actually on the marathon, was host to a string of strong times and new records. In the men’s marathon, the debuting Kinde Atanaw Alayew set a new course and Spanish all-comers record, winning the race in a time of 2:03:53. In the women’s event, his Ethiopian compatriot Roza Dereje won in a time of 2:18:30, placing her eighth on the world all-time list. A closely contested race full of back-and-forth between Ethiopian and Kenyan athletes, Azmera Abreha came through to finish second behind Dereje, with Birhane Dibaba third and pre-race favourite Vivian Cheruiyot in fourth, the first time four women have broken 2:19 at the same meeting. Meanwhile Mo Farah’s European marathon record fell, as Kaan Kigen Özbilen of Turkey ran 2:04:16 to finish as the runner-up behind Alayew.