Sony, Warner and Universal sign AI music licensing deals with startup Klay

LONDON (AP) — The world's biggest music labels have struck AI licensing deals with a little-known startup named Klay Vision, the companies said Thursday, the latest in a series of deals that underlines how the technology is shaking up the music industry ’s business model.

Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment, and their publishing arms, all signed separate agreements with Klay, according to an announcement posted on Warner's website.

It comes a day after Warner inked two other deals involving artificial intelligence, with startups Udio and Stability AI.

There were few details released about the agreements or about Klay, which is based in Los Angeles, and what it does.

High score: Winnipeg Video Game Orchestra goes from joysticks to drumsticks

There is, evidently, a lot of crossover between band nerds and video game enthusiasts.

The Winnipeg Video Game Orchestra has levelled up at an impressive pace, attracting about 70 like-minded players since forming earlier this spring.

The ensemble is set to perform its first major concert at Jubilee Place on Friday featuring background music from Sonic the Hedgehog, Kirby, The Legend of Zelda and other well-known games.

“We grew very, very quickly,” says director Dann Bjornson, who isn’t entirely surprised by the overwhelming local interest.

Artificial art a threat to human creativity

Thinking of Drew Struzan’s art — magic, really — in hand-drawn film posters, it’s hard not to think that this particular form will be another casualty of artificial intelligence, another art form reduced to cheap slop.

Forum Art Centre and the art of neighbourhood life

Most mornings when I step outside my door at Philips Square, I look across the street and see something that makes me quietly grateful to live where I do. It isn’t just the park or skyline view — it’s the steady rhythm of people coming and going through the doors of the Forum Art Centre at the corner of Eugenie Street and Taché Avenue.

Croft Music plays finale after century-plus in business

A 110-year-old music instrument business has concluded its coda.

On Saturday, Ian Crowson closed the doors for good on Croft Music and began his retirement. The company specialized in selling and renting string instruments — particularly violins — and sold accessories and sheet music.

For the last 23 years, Croft Music worked in tandem with Violins by Anton, a one-man business operated by luthier Anton Domozhyrov. Crowson rented instruments and Domozhyrov repaired them out of the same location at 833 Henderson Hwy. Domozhyrov will continue running Violins by Anton in the building.

Crowson announced his retirement on Facebook at the end of May, writing that he would finish his career shortly after his 72nd birthday in September.

Introduction to Michif — one word at a time

Before the wolf can howl, Norman Fleury says a Michif word: Ooyoowuk.

“Ooyoowuk,” Fleury repeats. Or, in English, “howl.”

Ooyoowuk is one of 70 words articulated by Fleury with an animation and English translation to match — all bundled into digital flashcards.

A group of Métis entrepreneurs unveiled their Michif flashcards this week. They join a swelling movement to revitalize the Métis language, which combines languages such as Cree and French.

Artists, performers open their doors, and their souls, for Culture Days

Culture Days, a national celebration of local arts and culture, kicks off today and runs through Oct. 12.

There are hundreds of free public events taking place across Manitoba over the next three weeks, including in Winnipeg, Morden, Gimli, Flin Flon and beyond. Nuit Blanche Winnipeg, the city’s annual late-night art party, also falls under the Culture Days umbrella and takes place Sept. 27.

Find a sample of the fun below and visit culturedays.ca for more information.

Central Park Moves: Weekend BeatsCentral Park, 367 Ellice Ave.

Play serves as prism for different politics, histories

If you can’t make it to opening night for the latest production from Theatre Projects Manitoba, don’t fret: there are five premières for The Only Good Indian, with each solo performance vastly different from the next.

Discovering public art by chance

A few weeks ago, on a bike ride through St. Boniface with my wife, we veered off the familiar path and stumbled upon something unexpected.

Winnipeg Jewish Theatre’s therapy-set two-hander plays with reality

The public and private perils of online engagement crash through the screen and into a therapist’s office in Job, a nervy drama that explores the power of posts and the ethical responsibilities inherent to our respective postings.

Written by New York’s Max Wolf Friedlich and directed by Calgary’s Jack Grinhaus, the opening production of the Winnipeg Jewish Theatre’s season heads to the races with the brandishing of a starter’s gun in the warped offices of Bay Area psychotherapist Lloyd (Dov Mickelson).

Lloyd’s description of his typical patient — young people who are “hopeless and beyond help” — isn’t exactly inspirational.

Blundstone-booted Jane (Jada Rifkin) seems to have made the cut, having been placed on paid administrative leave after a viral meltdown by her employer, an unnamed tech giant on whose campus she’s enrolled as an adjudicator.

Researchers solve decades-old color mystery in iconic Jackson Pollock painting

NEW YORK (AP) — Scientists have identified the origins of the blue color in one of Jackson Pollock's paintings with a little help from chemistry, confirming for the first time that the abstract expressionist used a vibrant, synthetic pigment known as manganese blue.

“Number 1A, 1948,” showcases Pollock's classic style: paint has been dripped and splattered across the canvas, creating a vivid, multicolored work. Pollock even gave the piece a personal touch, adding his handprints near the top.

The painting, currently on display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, is almost 9 feet (2.7 meters) wide. Scientists had previously characterized the reds and yellows splattered across the canvas, but the source of the rich turquoise blue proved elusive.

In a new study, researchers took scrapings of the blue paint and used lasers to scatter light and measure how the paint's molecules vibrated. That gave them a unique chemical fingerprint for the color, which they pinpointed as manganese blue.

A Lebanese dancer defies extremist threats and social norms with his sold-out performances

BEIRUT (AP) — Alexandre Paulikevitch put on his white dress and wig and danced his way to center stage, knowing that the extremist groups who had threatened him before his controversial recital might be waiting for him outside the theater.

The Lebanese dancer’s sold-out performance to a cheering crowd at a popular Beirut venue had angered fundamentalist movements ranging from the right-wing Christian Soldiers of God to Sunni Islamists.

The fundamentalists say Paulikevitch is “promoting homosexuality" because he wears dresses and corsets and undulates to classical Arabic music in a way which society largely sees as exclusive to women.

Paulikevitch says he’s breaking social norms and reintroducing forms of dance that were commonplace for men as recently as the early 20th century.

Offhand insult in 2003 gave rise to the Banjo Bowl — one of CFL's most-colourful and enduring rivalries

It was the verbal shot heard ’round the world. Or at least, across a pair of Prairie provinces.

Canadian Football League fans in Manitoba and Saskatchewan are well familiar with the origin of the Banjo Bowl, the annual tilt that pits the host Winnipeg Blue Bombers against their principal rival, the Saskatchewan Roughriders.

Followers of both teams can tell you that the match evolved out of a comment uttered by former Bombers placekicker Troy Westwood in September 2003, when he sarcastically referred to Saskatchewaners (Saskatchewanites? Saskatchewians?) as “banjo-picking inbreds.”

Then, how he doubled down on that jibe a few weeks later when, at a scheduled news conference, he told members of the media that he had misspoken, as “the vast majority of the people in Saskatchewan have no idea how to play the banjo.” (For the record, Westwood’s mom was born in the Land of the Living Skies, and his aunts and grandmother were living there when he was spouting off.)

Ryan Reynolds suggests swapping phones with a MAGA supporter, checking out their algorithm

TORONTO - Ryan Reynolds says mounting tensions between Canada and the U.S. haven't changed anything for him as a Canuck in Hollywood.

The "Deadpool" star preached unity during an onstage conversation at the Toronto International Film Festival, when chief programming officer Anita Lee asked him what it was like being a Canadian in Los Angeles during this "elbows up" era of increased nationalism.

In a nearly five-minute answer to the question, Reynolds said he's always held Canadian values, including conflict resolution, and he seeks "to learn, rather than win."

Reynolds is at TIFF to promote the new documentary "John Candy: I Like Me," which he produced.

Hotel-weary evacuees guests at powwow

SIOUX VALLEY DAKOTA NATION — Evacuees displaced from their communities in northern Manitoba were invited to Sioux Valley Dakota Nation on Friday for what the chief called a mental health day.

A hundred people were at the afternoon event when the Brandon Sun visited.

The event, which included live music, games and children’s entertainment, was a way to give a day of fresh air to evacuees, Chief Vince Tacan said.

“We thought we’d give our relatives from the north a mental health day, because staying in hotels gets hard after a while,” Tacan said.

‘You’re planting your brand flag’: The power of brand building in the women’s sports boom

On a cold day in the beginning of 2024, Alastair Merry and Mary Lou Bunn had a few questions for a public librarian in Ottawa, Ontario.

“If you could describe Ottawa and what it means to you in a couple words, how would you do it?” they asked. “What do you think of the spirit of the city?”

Merry and Bunn, along with the design firm Flower Shop that they co-founded, were hired by the then newly minted Professional Women’s Hockey League to create the nicknames and logos for the league’s inaugural six teams. They were traveling around North America to figure out what made those six cities tick.

As the ever-growing crop of new women’s leagues — at least eight have launched in the past three years — all aim for longevity, one of the cornerstones of any sustainable foundation is team branding. It encompasses everything from the nicknames to the color schemes and logos, and the PWHL has set a high bar there that other up-and-comers would love to emulate.

Green chemist and musician on fighting climate change

There’s no shortage of doom and gloom associated with the words “climate change” these days. As a result, many people are stressed out and feeling helpless.

Particularly concerning is that, more than ever, younger people are experiencing considerable distress with environmental anxiety, also known as eco-anxiety or climate anxiety. The Journal of Mental Health and Climate Change, an open-access publication that features interdisciplinary scientific research on mental health and climate change, continues to write extensively on this subject.

While prominent environmental activists, including well-known science broadcaster David Suzuki, paint a bleak picture of the future, many other professionals in various fields are working tirelessly to educate, inspire and fight the good fight for the next generations.

Born and raised in Lynn Lake, Man., Devin Latimer is one of those professionals. The faculty member in chemistry at the University of Winnipeg is also a long-time musician, bass player with local band Leaf Rapids and the Juno award-winning Nathan Music Co.

Graphic novelist to lead free workshop for aspiring artists

Jonathan Dyck’s most monumental piece of advice? Start small.

Mass tourism a modern ill

When I went to Paris in 2012, I skipped the Louvre. Sacré bleu!

‘She’s all of us’: mural illustrates ties between Winnipeg and grateful Ukrainian newcomers

Blue and yellow ribbons wrapping around the city’s skyline show the deep connection between Ukraine and Manitoba in a new mural.

Take Pride Winnipeg, a downtown non-profit that seeks to clean up and inspire civic pride, unveiled its newest mural, titled “Pray for Ukraine” in the Exchange District on Monday.

It pictures a Ukrainian woman in traditional clothing stoically gazing into the distance as butterflies and a dove — which symbolize hope, peace and rebirth — flutter around the Esplanade Riel and Canadian Museum for Human Rights.

The installation at Exchange District BIZ at 492 Main St. was painted by Jennifer Mosienko, who’s worked on more than 40 murals across the city.

In Marseille, a shadow becomes art in Banksy’s latest street mural

MARSEILLE, France (AP) — The lighthouse appeared overnight. Painted on a wall tucked away in a quiet Marseille street, its beam aligned perfectly with the real-life shadow of a metal post on the pavement. At its center, stenciled in crisp white, are the words: “I want to be what you saw in me.”

Banksy had struck again.

On Friday, the elusive British street artist confirmed the work by posting two images on his official Instagram account — without caption or coordinates. Fans quickly identified the location as 1 Rue Félix Frégier, in the Catalans district of Marseille’s 7th arrondissement, near the sea.

Since then, crowds have gathered at the site. Tourists snap photos. Children point. Locals who usually walk past the building stop to take a closer look.

Dive-bombed or not, Vancouverites are still pro-crow, researchers say

VANCOUVER - Along her journey towards understanding Vancouver's crows, psychology professor Suzanne MacDonald says she made a friend.

It's a crow that brings her gifts after she set up a bird feeder at her home in the neighbourhood of Kitsilano.

Once, it was a barnacle-covered shell, which MacDonald treasures. Other times, it was "bits of garbage" that MacDonald doesn't fancy much, though she "appreciates the sentiment."

"I think he definitely recognizes me. When other people go out on my patio, he doesn't come to them. He knows me," said MacDonald.