2022年2月16日 星期三

The T List: Five things we recommend this week

An art-filled hotel, a new Niki de Saint Phalle biography — and more.

Welcome to the T List, a newsletter from the editors of T Magazine. Each week, we share things we're eating, wearing, listening to or coveting now. Sign up here to find us in your inbox every Wednesday. And you can always reach us at tlist@nytimes.com.

VISIT THIS

A New York Hotel Showcasing Australian Aboriginal Art

A Grand Queen room at the Wall Street Hotel featuring a reproduction of Betty Muffler's "Ngangkari Ngura (Healing Country)."Courtesy of the Wall Street Hotel

By Michaela Trimble

T Contributor

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In the late 18th century, the Tontine Building, on Manhattan's Wall Street, was a tavern and coffeehouse — and the site of the New York Stock Exchange. Next month, the onetime trading center will reopen as the Wall Street Hotel, a 180-room boutique whose current owners, the Paspaleys, an Australian pearl production family, hope to make it more of a cultural hub. When it came to choosing art for the hotel, they partnered with the APY Art Centre Collective, an Indigenous-led organization dedicated to promoting Australian Aboriginal art. Examples of commissioned works — among them prints of paintings inspired by constellations by Matjangka Norris and layered land- and dreamscapes by Betty Muffler, who favors black and red ocher — appear throughout. After taking a self-guided tour, guests can have a cappuccino or cocktail in the all-day lounge, which is appointed with plush velvet seating, or explore the Financial District by complimentary Vélosophy bike. Rooms from $499, thewallsthotel.com.

COVET THIS

A Milliner's Collaboration With a Texan Bootmaker

Looks from Nick Fouquet's collaboration with Lucchese.Diego Vourakis

By Tilly Macalister-Smith

T Contributor

The Los Angeles milliner Nick Fouquet was researching cowboy boots and pondering an expansion into footwear when he received a call from Lucchese, the revered Texas boot brand founded in 1883, about collaborating. "It was very serendipitous — a sign," says Fouquet, who created headpieces for fashion houses Givenchy and Rochas before launching his own line a decade ago. And the partnership made sense: Both brands champion homegrown craftsmanship while aiming to update the idea of Americana. "There are an enormous number of similarities in the anatomy and construction, too. We have band blocks; they have lasts," says Fouquet, who visited Lucchese's archives in El Paso and saw lasts made for John Wayne, Gregory Peck and Jane Russell. In the end, the labels gave some classic Lucchese models a '70s spin, coming up with eight new styles including stacked-heel boots in topstitched leather and tonal suede and snappy two-tone loafers, as well as a handful of printed silk neckerchiefs and (of course) cowboy-inspired hats. And yet, Fouquet promises, "the pieces will be as much at home on the streets of Paris as on a ranch." Accessories from $240; footwear from $895, nickfouquet.com and lucchese.com.

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A Peek Into the Colorful Mind of Niki de Saint Phalle

Niki de Saint Phalle's "Californian Diary (Queen Califia)" (1994), published in "What Is Now Known Was Once Only Imagined: An (Auto)biography of Niki de Saint Phalle" by Nicole Rudick, Siglio, 2022. Courtesy Niki Charitable Art Foundation

By Erik Morse

T Contributor

Nicole Rudick's illustrated biography of nouveau réalisme artist Niki de Saint Phalle, "What Is Now Known Was Once Only Imagined," takes its title from a (perhaps intentionally) misquoted snippet of William Blake's "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" (1790) that appears in one of Saint Phalle's typically rococo doodles. The line is also the perfect tag for the provocateur's particular brand of 20th-century aestheticism. "I would spend my life questioning," she wrote in a 1992 note addressed to her dead mother. "I would fall in love with the question mark." Such voracious curiosity led to her various autodidactic pursuits as a painter, draftsperson, sculptor — she is probably best known for her Gaudí-inspired installation, "The Tarot Garden," in Pescia Fiorentina, Tuscany — writer, filmmaker, gardener and perfumer. In her subtitle, Rudick (who has contributed to T) refers to the book as "an (auto)biography," as it is comprised almost entirely of hundreds of Saint Phalle's colorful sketches and a trove of her letters, essays and marginalia, in which the artist rhapsodizes on, among other things, adolescent love (she met her future husband, the writer Harry Mathews, at age 11), mental illness and the harlequin fantasies that pervaded her daily life. The result is an intimate scrapbook of the life of one of the century's most inventive artists. $45, sigliopress.com.

SEE THIS

A New Gallery on the Upper East Side

From left: Jo Messer's "She has something to do with his sense of humor" (2021); Shannon Cartier Lucy's "God is Gorgeous" (2018); Tamo Jugeli's "Untitled" (2020).Emily Knecht, courtesy of Polina Berlin Gallery

By Will Fenstermaker

T Contributor

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Having cut her teeth at such influential galleries as Paula Cooper and Paul Kasmin, Polina Berlin is now opening her own, on Manhattan's Upper East Side. With a leafy backyard garden and abundant natural light, the 2,000-square-foot space, once the parlor floor of a townhouse, retains its homey feel. And this is fitting since Berlin hopes the gallery will foster close bonds. "The artists in Paula's program have such admiration for each other and push each other to ignite new ideas," says Berlin. "It would be very satisfying to have that happen in my space." The gallery's inaugural show, titled "Emotional Intelligence" and opening next week, features various riffs on kinship. It includes work by 10 artists, including a painting of three semiabstract nudes by Loie Hollowell and another of a figure holding an umbrella that reads "God is Gorgeous" by Shannon Cartier Lucy. Berlin sees the show as a kind of mission statement. "These artists are so sensitive to how people are treated," she says. "And if I can in some modest way make the art world better for the people I work with, then I feel the accountability to do that." "Emotional Intelligence" runs from Feb. 22 to March 26, polinaberlingallery.com.

BUY THIS

A Destination for Weekend Home Projects

From left: Vessels by Fort Standard Objects, lamps by In Common With and Hannah Bigeleisen and a stool by Another Country; a seating area with Faye Toogood for Calico wallpaper, a mirror and chair by Another Country and a table by Fern. The sink is by Kast Concrete Basins and the faucet is from Waterworks.Sean Davidson

When it comes to sourcing supplies for small home projects — retiling a backsplash, say, or papering a single wall — it can feel like your options are either Home Depot (practical but not necessarily inspiring) or a brand's showroom (obscure pricing, too many choices). It's partly for this reason that Sarah Zames and Colin Stief, of the Brooklyn-based design studio General Assembly, are opening their first store, Assembly Line, in Boerum Hill this week. The warm, light-flooded space is laid out like a home, with inviting living and dining areas, and filled with furniture and fixtures by designers whom Zames and Stief admire — upholstered oak stools by Vonnegut/Kraft, elegant chrome cabinet knobs by Fort Standard Objects — as well as a tightly edited selection of materials for renovations, which includes Calico wallpapers printed with a range of nature-inspired motifs, glossy zellige tiles from Clé and lime wash paints from Bauwerk. Unlike in many showrooms, every item in the store is clearly priced, and Zames and Stief are available for consultations by appointment. A DIYer might easily come in to look at an Elitis fabric sample but leave with a new bedside lamp — like the great options, with globby, hand-formed stone bases, by the Brooklyn maker Hannah Bigeleisen — or a plan to reimagine an entire room. 373 Atlantic Avenue, assemblyline.co.

FROM T'S INSTAGRAM

This Season, Dramatic Duality Reigns

From left: Max Mara coat, $1,990, maxmara.com; Atsuko Kudo bodysuit, about $412, atsukokudo.com; Andreas Kronthaler for Vivienne Westwood skirt, price on request, viviennewestwood.com; Botter hood and goggles, price on request, botter.world; Vex latex gloves, $80, and stockings, $130, vexclothing.com; and Prada shoes, price on request, prada.com. Versace dress, $2,975, versace.com; Atsuko Kudo top, about $425; Botter hood and goggles, price on request; Elissa Poppy gloves, $87, elissapoppy.com; Vex latex stockings, $130; and Prada shoes, price on request.Photograph by Luis Alberto Rodriguez. Styled by Jacob K

By pairing unexpected textures, like feathers and latex, with fluorescent colors and voluminous forms, the season's eye-catching fashion embraces the many sides of us all. See the full story at tmagazine.com, and follow us on Instagram.

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2022年2月11日 星期五

The Daily: Is the Metaverse Just Marketing?

The metaverse doesn't quite exist yet. But the hype still matters.

This week, we're exploring a question from our metaverse episode: whether the hype around the metaverse is just bluster — or the opportunity for systemic change. This is the latest in our ongoing coverage of how platform companies are reshaping our world (you can listen to the rest on our Big Tech playlist). Then, we introduce you to a new season of Modern Love.

The big idea: Is the metaverse just marketing?

"The Daily" strives to reveal a new idea in every episode. Below, we go deeper on one, from our show on Microsoft and the metaverse.

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A gaming event in New York in 2018. The metaverse is the convergence of two ideas that have been around for many years: virtual reality and a digital second life.Terrin Waack/Associated Press

Google the word metaverse.

About 51 million results appear. Headlines announcing state-backed metaverse investments worth billions of dollars pop up, too. And next to all that, in Google's description for the search term? "Fictional world."

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The algorithm is right. The metaverse doesn't yet exist, beyond rudimentary versions in games. But that hasn't stopped platform companies, including Google itself, from betting big that it will exist soon. These investments are dealing in speculation, banking on the prospect of an enormous, functional and interoperable virtual world where tech C.E.O.s promise we will soon work, shop and socialize as digital avatars. The pitch is essentially a technologically improved, personalized version of The Sims.

The problem is, the metaverse can't be manifested with just wishful Silicon Valley thinking. While much of our lives have already shifted online during the pandemic, making those experiences truly immersive at scale is a knotty challenge. The metaverse is currently stalled by a lack of infrastructure (the hardware and software aren't ready yet), a monopolistic approach to platform development (the metaverse is likely to require more openness and collaboration) and a lack of clear governance standards (some experts want to avoid reinscribing the pitfalls of social media).

So without a functional product, we wanted to know, what's with all the hype and the headlines? Is the metaverse just marketing, as our tech columnist Kevin Roose asked?

Meta déjà vu

If this moment feels familiar, that's because it is: A fictive metaverse future has been floated since the early 1990s by authors and technologists dreaming of an era when our virtual lives would be as important as our physical realities.

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For the last few decades, the idea has remained fringe. But slowly, it has seeped into the collective consciousness.

The growing popularity of gaming helped introduce the idea of a digital second life to the general public, allowing people to have immersive social experiences in digital worlds. New technology, including virtual reality headsets, facilitated these experiences, and movies like "Ready Player One" helped viewers imagine the possibility of a metaverse.

When "Ready Player One" came out in 2018, the metaverse still felt like a distant, potentially dystopian possibility. Then the pandemic accelerated the digitization of nearly everything, including schooling, working, socializing and exercising. Now, one poll estimates that at the current level of technological consumption, the average American will spend up to 44 years of his or her life staring at a screen.

"These things that were very fringe and dismissed as kind of a crazy thing or ridiculed or ignored — now suddenly, at some point, they just start to seem like common sense," said Nick Bostrom, the Oxford University philosopher best known for developing simulation theory.

Marketing and the metaverse

As the prospect of the metaverse has been dawning, slowly, on the general public, technology companies have been competing behind the scenes to realize it for years. Platform companies have been quietly racing to develop their own version of the metaverse, specifically by acquiring companies with useful hardware assets.

Facebook first bought Oculus, the VR gaming company, in 2014. Five years later, the company acquired CTRL-Labs, which developed a wristband capable of transmitting electrical signals from the brain to a computer. Then, amid a public relations crisis late last year, Facebook announced it would rebrand itself, renaming its parent company Meta, with some critics wondering whether the name change was just a strategic marketing move.

Matthew Ball, an expert on the metaverse, is less cynical about the name change. "I think it is significant, less as a marketing term and more as a signal," he said. "I don't really think it's marketing because marketing is primarily oriented toward a product that's available for sale," which he argues the metaverse isn't — yet.

If the brand shift was a signal intended to set trends, establish ambitions and allocate resources, it worked. Soon after the Meta announcement, Microsoft placed a major bet that people would be spending more and more time in the digital world, with its $70 billion purchase of Activision Blizzard, a social gaming company. Apple is reportedly developing its own consumer VR headset.

Now, founders, investors, futurists and executives are all trying to stake their claim in the metaverse, expounding on its potential for social connection, experimentation, entertainment and, crucially, profit.

The threats and opportunities of transition

Even if the metaverse envisioned by Mark Zuckerberg does not come to fruition by 2026, some argue a more immersive digital future is inevitable.

Mr. Bostrom expects that technological developments, such as "more realistic computer graphics" and advances in artificial intelligence, will continue to incentivize user engagement with immersive digital realities. "I think that's what's ultimately going to normalize it," he said.

And while the metaverse is largely hypothetical, experts argue that now is the moment for the public to focus on another speculative prospect: what standards they might want to govern the next digital transition. According to Mr. Bostrom, this moment presents an opportunity for the public to consider "the future of humanity and existential risks and how new technologies might change the human condition."

This is a question few were asking in the early 2000s. "We're 15 years into the social media era," Mr. Ball, the metaverse expert, said, "and there are a lot of problems from exactly that transition which remain unsolved. Data rights, data security, data understanding, radicalization, disinformation, platform power, platform regulation, unhappiness." Without strategic reforms, he added, "those problems will become harder" in the future.

Specifically, many experts are concerned about the heightened prospect that misinformation will appear real in the metaverse, the omnipotence of companies controlling this new reality and the bias and surveillance concerns of a superintelligent A.I. tracking users every move.

But Mr. Ball believes any moment of transition also creates an opening for reform. "Every single time that we have these platform shifts, the dominant companies tend to change," he said. "The fact that the companies can change means that we, as consumers, as voters and users, have an opportunity to affect that shift."

What does love sound like to you?

"When you were around 16, what was the song that taught you about love?" Anna Martin, the new host of the Modern Love podcast, asks on the season premiere this week.

The episode is all about teenage love. "When you're a teenager, you have a lot of feelings — it comes with the territory," Anna explains. "You put on your headphones, and you sink into a song about heartbreak and loneliness and longing and love."

For Lisa Selin Davis, author of the essay "What Lou Reed Taught Me About Love," the song "I'll Be Your Mirror" became the soundtrack to her summer romance in the '80s with a floppy-haired "rocker kid" who inadvertently helped her find healing.

Isabelia Herrera, an arts critic fellow at The Times, recalls how "Irreplaceable" by Beyoncé came out right before her quinceañera — a milestone in her womanhood. "I knew that I was going to go onto the dance floor and scream the lyrics by myself, and I just hoped that people would follow me," Isabelia said. She hadn't been in love yet, but the song became "a blueprint to kind of remember who I am and the power that I have, even in a relationship that makes you feel like you might not have anything."

If the episode sparks a memory of a song from your teenage years, you can share it with the podcast team. Tune in every Wednesday for a new episode of Modern Love.

On The Daily this week

Monday: Who else is culpable in George Floyd's death?

Wednesday: How one movement is attempting to fight misinformation — with more misinformation.

Thursday: Why Democratic governors are turning against mask mandates.

Friday: This is what happened when Spotify and Joe Rogan ran headlong into the pandemic.

That's it for the Daily newsletter. See you next week.

Have thoughts about the show? Tell us what you think at thedaily@nytimes.com.

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