Tim Douglas

In a secluded national park site in rural France, far from the techno-hubs of Silicon Valley, artist Fabien Giraud is tinkering with a long-term project that will redefine the relationship between technology, history and reality. The Frenchman’s latest work is an artificial intelligence-led film entitled The Feral, and when Giraud says long term, he means it: 2025 marks the first instalment of an ambitious 1000-year-long project that, after he dies, he hopes will live on through 31 future generations of human artists and performers.

A luminous curtain of pink and yellow floods the sky above the Noosa Everglades as our luxury cabin cruiser drops anchor. Skipper Garry smiles. He’s seen it a thousand times, but the view never gets old. Master bartender Trevor doesn’t miss a beat: “Another margarita, team?”

Australia’s highest-profile authors, including Nobel laureate for literature JM Coetzee, award-winning writers Geraldine Brooks, Helen Garner, Kate Grenville, Alexis Wright, Thomas Keneally and Trent Dalton, have banded together to protest against the State Library of Victoria’s plans to cut more than half its reference ­librarian staff.

Singer-songwriter Deborah Conway says she lives in a constant state of alert in the wake of the Bondi terror attacks, following years of harassment that have included death threats, gig cancellations and online trolling over her Jewish identity.

When Gillian Welch and David Rawlings recorded Everything Is Free Now in 2001, they were responding to the advent of online file-sharing service Napster and the sudden collapse of the music economy. A quarter-century later, the alt-country classic has taken on fresh urgency in the streaming age, where artists earn as few as $0.002 per play and corporate giants like Spotify wield more power than ever over the creative classes.

War in the Middle East is taking a toll on Australia’s cultural calendar, with international flight disruptions forcing several acts to pull out of this weekend’s WOMADelaide.

The Oscars are around the corner, and I find myself faced with what is becoming an annual tough decision: engage with the water-cooler conjecture around Hollywood’s night of nights or, more agreeably, slowly extract from my skull both eyes with a rusty corkscrew, one of those gnarly-limbed de Gaulle numbers from the ’80s that looked like it might be an extra from Blade Runner.

A major choreography fellowship backed by an American philanthropic foundation will inject up to $300,000 into the creation of new Australian dance works, with respected Indigenous choreographer Beau Dean Riley Smith named as the inaugural recipient.

Sidney Hordern Myer stands at the intersection of enterprise and service. The businessman and philanthropist has been recognised for a lifetime of generous, strategic giving. Mr Myer was announced as an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in the General Division, for distinguished service to the community through philanthropic endeavours to equality, to the arts, and to Australian-Asian relations.

A leading theatre producer has called on the federal government to introduce tax incentives for commercial live theatre following the premature closure of two major musicals.