If you’re not familiar with the fantastically strange yet remarkably relatable premise of the sci-fi office series “Severance,” what I’m about to say may not make a whole lot of sense. Skip to paragraph three for a primer, then come back up here. Hopefully I won’t sound quite as unhinged after a bit of context, but then again, it’s been a rough few months so I can’t promise 100% sanity.
Surgically severing my work life from my personal life sounds like a delightful option right about now. The unprecedented challenges facing journalism have meant that my job keeps getting harder, from covering a chaotic election to processing internal strife here at the paper, to contending with how to write about the rise of a new American oligarchy without imploding. All this, and our hometown is still burning. In short, the once-disturbing premise of the dystopian drama/dark comedy now infuses me with calm. Finally, a way to do my job without the emotional strife!
Season 1 of the clever, absorbing show executive produced by Ben Stiller, who directed six of the nine episodes, introduced viewers to Lumon Industries and its “severed” workforce, made up of employees who’ve agreed to a surgical procedure that separates their work memories from their nonwork memories. The switch is activated when the altered individual step into an employee elevator that takes them down to the “severed work floor” in the morning and back up to the surface at the end of their shift.
The innies of the macrodata refinement department spend their shifts in front of computer screens, sorting random numbers into digital bins. They have no idea what the digits mean or what their employer produces. The sole focus is reaching their quarterly goal. Outties have no idea how their innies are being treated. In other words, it’s a corporate overlord’s wet dream. Even stranger, Lumon‘s office culture revolves around a cultlike devotion for its late founder, Kier Eagan, evident in the sculptures, paintings and numerous volumes of Kier scripture throughout the building.
Sarah Bock, left, Adam Scott, John Turturro, Zach Cherry and Britt Lower in Season 2 of “Severance.”
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(Apple)
Returning Friday after nearly three years, Apple TV+’s psychological thriller continues to explore the extreme consequences of seeking a work/life balance, and not a minute too soon to quash my fantasies of a viable path toward leaving one’s work at the office — or escaping one’s personal woes by getting lost in work.
The consolation for dashing my dreams? Season 2 is an exquisite, masterful work of television. Its 10 episodes pack sci-fi creepiness, wry social commentary and black humor inside of a tightly constructed story that’s substantive and thrilling.
Created by Dan Erickson, Season 2 expands the backstories of its main characters, adding emotional depth to the cold, Kubrick-esque environs of their workplace. We rejoin the macrodata refinement team five months after last season’s epic cliffhanger, when they breached the system by tripping Lumon’s “overtime contingency” mechanism, or OTC, to awaken their innies in the outside world.
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Mark S. (Adam Scott), Dylan G. (Zach Cherry), Helly R. (Britt Lower) and Irving B. (John Turturro) hoped to alert the public about their oppressive work conditions and glean insight into who they are on the outside. And maybe they’d even solve a few mysteries about their employer. Why is the data they handle deemed highly classified? Is Mark’s allegedly deceased wife, Gemma (Dichen Lachman), alive and “working” at Lumon? And what’s the story with the goats?
While they unmask several mysteries, fresh riddles emerge. Newbie Ms. Huang (Sarah Bock) looks to be about 12, but she’s working at Lumon. When asked why she’s a child, she dryly replies, “Because of when I was born.”
Former enforcer Ms. Cobel (Patricia Arquette), who imploded last season, is plotting to win back her former position, or is she? Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman), with his unnerving smile and rageful undercurrent, still roams the “severed floor,” but cracks are appearing in his managerial facade. And Lumon has turned the MDR team’s revolt into a PR opportunity, promising more transparency and respect for its severed workforce.
Employees are now promised better conditions, such as hall passes and exciting new snack choices like fruit leather! Lumon has even graciously pulled its surveillance cameras out of the break room, or so they say. The MDR team knows better, and they have a plan.
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I don’t want to reveal too much here, and I’d probably get much of it wrong anyway because “Severance” encompasses more twists, turns and deceptive doorways than the endless hallways of Lumon. But trying to figure out what’s happening, and who’s behind it, is half of the fun.
Other addictive aspects of this show are the powerful performances. Turturro’s portrayal of Irv’s haunted outtie is spellbinding and infused with heartbreak. Scott’s performance as the team leader who’s seeking answers, and perhaps even liberation from Lumon, is strikingly authentic against the fabricated, sterile environs of the office. Tillman’s slow reveal of Milchick’s hidden layers add new, captivating dimensions to a show that’s already full of them. Nuanced performances from Cherry and Lower animate the personality split between innies and outties.
Disturbing, dark riddles compound and unfurl in wonderfully unexpected ways by the thrilling season finale. And though the story comes together in a tight conclusion, enough intrigue remains to concoct another season (if we’re lucky).
“Severance’s” playground is the uneven field where office drones battle the Musks and Bezos of the world and where the insidious power of corporate behemoths stretches far beyond their stated business. If only those scenarios were science fiction.
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.”
