Sophie Nyweide, a former child actor whose brief career in the late aughts to early 2010s included roles in films “Mammoth,” “Noah” and “Bella,” has died.
Nyweide died April 14 in her home state of Vermont, her family announced in a Legacy.com obituary published last week. “Creative, athletic and wise beyond her years, Sophie accomplished so much in the time she danced upon earth,” her loved ones wrote. She was 24.
The obituary described Nyweide as a welcoming person who saw people other than relatives as family. “Her death has left a hole in all,” the obituary continued. “Sadness, loss, heartbreak and even anger is present for those who loved her and now will have to continue on with her laughter, infectious passion and zest — without those amazing blue eyes that could look directly into one’s soul.”
The family’s announcement did not disclose additional details about the actor’s death, including a cause, but her loved ones implied that the actor had been taken advantage of, refused professional help and self-medicated to cope with undisclosed “trauma and shame,” which led to her death. The Bennington Police Department said in a statement shared with The Times that it is investigating Nyweide’s death as a “possible unintentional overdose” and will conduct an investigation, including final autopsy and toxicology reports.
Police and rescue personnel responded to a 911 call about an unresponsive female early April 14, according to the statement. Officials arrived to a “wooded area along the banks of the Roaring Branch River” where first responders “attempted life saving measures” on Nyweide, who was pronounced dead at the scene less than an hour later. The person who called 911 was present with Nyweide at the time of her death and is cooperating with investigators, the statement said. Investigators will reportedly consider a range of possible causes, including foul play.
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Nyweide was reportedly in the early stages of pregnancy when she died, according to several outlets citing her death certificate.
Nyweide was born July 8, 2000, in Burlington, Vt., and enjoyed a varied career that spanned from her screen debut in the 2006 film “Bella” to a 2015 episode of ABC’s beloved social experiment series “What Would You Do?” Nyweide was inspired by her mother, actor Shelly Gibson (“All My Children,” “Blood & Oil”), to pursue a career in Hollywood.
By the time she was 11, Nyweide appeared in a handful of films including the 2009 multilingual and country-hopping film “Mammoth.” In the film, directed by Lukas Moodysson, Nyweide appeared as the onsceen 8-year-old daughter of Michelle Williams and Gael García Bernal. Nyweide also shared the screen with James Franco and Julianne Nicholson in the 2010 feature “Shadows & Lies,” and appeared alongside Jessica Alba and Chris Messina as an elementary school student in “An Invisible Sign.”
Nyweide’s credits also include films “And Then Came Love,” “Noah” and “Margot at the Wedding,” TV series “Law & Order” and shorts “Mistakes Were Made” and “Born Again.”
“She seemed happiest on a movie set, becoming someone else,” her family said in the obituary, adding productions were a “safe place for her.”
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The obituary continued: “She was an eager adventurer and picked up the customs and even languages of any place she visited. She made friends easily at her schools and saw the good in everyone.”
Before she became an actor, Nyweide took inspiration from her older brother and found a knack for snowboarding. She started competing in the sport at age 5, according to her obituary.
“A life ended too soon. May it not be in vain,” the obituary said. “May we all learn from her brief life on earth and do better. Yes, we must all protect our children and do better.”
The family asks that donations be made in Nyweide’s name to RAINN, an organization dedicated to supporting survivors of sexual violence.
A former executive at Live Nation, the world’s largest live entertainment company, is suing the company, alleging that he was wrongfully terminated after he raised concerns about alleged financial misconduct and improper accounting practices.
Nicholas Rumanes alleges he was “fraudulently induced” in 2022 to leave a lucrative position as head of strategic development at a real estate investment trust to create a new role as executive vice president of development and business practice at Beverly Hills-based Live Nation.
In his new position, Rumanes said, he raised “serious and legitimate alarm” over the the company’s business practices.
As a result, he says, he was “unlawfully terminated,” according to the lawsuit filed Thursday in Los Angeles County Superior Court.
“Rumanes was, simply put, promised one job and forced to accept another. And then he was cut loose for insisting on doing that lesser job with integrity and honesty,” according to the lawsuit.
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He is seeking $35 million in damages.
Representatives for Live Nation were not immediately available for comment.
The lawsuit comes a week after a federal jury in Manhattan found that Live Nation and its Ticketmaster subsidiary had operated a monopoly over major concert venues, controlling 86% of the concert market.
Rumanes’ lawsuit describes a “culture of deception” at Live Nation, saying its “basic business model was to misstate and exaggerate financial figures in efforts to solicit and secure business.”
Such practices “spanned a wide spectrum of projects in what appeared to be a company-wide pattern of financial misrepresentation and misleading disclosures,” the lawsuit states.
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Rumanes says he received materials and documents that showed that the company inflated projected revenues across multiple venue development projects.
Additionally, Rumanes contends that the company violated a federal law that requires independent financial auditing and transparency and instead ran Live Nation “through a centralized, opaque structure” that enables it to “bypass oversight and internal checks and balances.”
In 2010, as a condition of the Live Nation-Ticketmaster merger, the newly formed company agreed to a consent decree with the government that prohibited the firm from threatening venues to use Ticketmaster. In 2019 the Justice Department found that the company had repeatedly breached the agreement, and it extended the decree.
Rumanes contends that he brought his concerns to the attention of the company’s management, but his warnings were “repeatedly ignored.”
At the centre of Madhuvidhu directed by Vishnu Aravind is a house where only men reside, three generations of them living in harmony. Unlike the Anjooran household in Godfather, this is not a house where entry is banned to women, but just that women don’t choose to come here. For Amrithraj alias Ammu (Sharafudheen), the protagonist, 28 marriage proposals have already fallen through although he was not lacking in interest.
When a not-so-cordial first meeting with Sneha (Kalyani Panicker) inevitably turns into mutual attraction, things appear about to change. But some unexpected hiccups are waiting for them, their different religions being one of them. Writers Jai Vishnu and Bipin Mohan do not seem to have any major ambitions with Madhuvidhu, but they seem rather content to aim for the middle space of a feel-good entertainer. Only that they end up hitting further lower.
After more than two and a half years of research, planning and construction, Dataland, the world’s first museum of AI arts, will open June 20.
Co-founded by new media artists Refik Anadol and Efsun Erkılıç, the museum anchors the $1-billion Frank Gehry-designed Grand LA complex across the street from Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles. Its first exhibition, “Machine Dreams: Rainforest,” created by Refik Anadol Studio, was inspired by a trip to the Amazon and uses vast data sets to immerse visitors in a machine-generated sensory experience of the natural world.
The architecture of the space, which Anadol calls “a living museum,” is used to reflect distant rainforest ecosystems, including changing temperature, light, smell and visuals. Anadol refers to these large-scale, shimmering tableaus as “digital sculptures.”
“This is such an important technology, and represents such an important transformation of humanity,” Anadol said in an interview. “And we found it so meaningful and purposeful to be sure that there is a place to talk about it, to create with it.”
The 35,000-square-foot privately funded museum devotes 25,000 square feet to public space, with the remaining 10,000 square feet holding the in-house technology that makes the space run. Dataland contains five immersive galleries and a 30-foot ceiling. An escalator by the entrance will transport guests to the experiences below. The museum declined to say how much Dataland, designed by architecture firm Gensler, cost to build.
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An isometric architectural rendering of Dataland. The 25,000-square-foot AI arts museum also contains an additional 10,000 square feet of non-public space that holds its operational technology.
(Refik Anadol Studio for Dataland)
Dataland will collect and preserve artificial intelligence art and is powered by an open-access AI model created by Anadol’s studio called the Large Nature Model. The model, which does not source without permission, culls mountains of data about the natural world from partners including the Smithsonian, London’s Natural History Museum and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. This data, including up to half a billion images of nature, will form the basis for the creation of a variety of AI artworks, including “Machine Dreams.”
“AI art is a part of digital art, meaning a lineage that uses software, data and computers to create a form of art,” Anadol explained. “I know that many artists don’t want to disclose their technologies, but for me, AI means possibilities. And possibilities come with responsibilities. We have to disclose exactly where our data comes from.”
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Sustainability is another responsibility that Anadol takes seriously. For more than a decade, Anadol has devoted much thought to the massive carbon footprint associated with AI models. The Large Nature Model is hosted on Google Cloud servers in Oregon that use 87% carbon-free, renewable energy. Anadol says the energy used to support an individual visit to the museum is equivalent to what it takes to charge a single smartphone.
Anadol believes AI can form a powerful bridge to nature — serving as a means to access and preserve it — and that the swiftly evolving technology can be harnessed to illuminate essential truths about humanity’s relationship to an interconnected planet. During a time of great anxiety about the power of AI to disrupt lives and livelihoods, Anadol maintains it can be a revolutionary tool in service of a never-before-seen form of art.
“The works generate an emergent, living reality, a machine’s dream shaped by continuous streams of environmental and biological data. Within this evolving system, moments of recognition and interpretation emerge across different forms of knowledge,” a news release about the museum explains. “At the same time, the exhibition registers loss as part of this expanded field of perception, most notably in the Infinity Room, where visitors encounter the 1987 recording of the last known Kauaʻi ʻŌʻō, a now-extinct bird whose unanswered call becomes part of the work.”
“It’s very exciting to say that AI art is not image only,” Anadol said. “It’s a very multisensory, multimedium experience — meaning sound, image, video, text, smell, taste and touch. They are all together in conversation.”
