David Lynch, Twin Peaks and Mulholland Drive director, dies aged 78

David Lynch. Photograph: Dylan Coulter/The Guardian

By Andrew Pulver

Film-maker who specialised in surreal, noir style mysteries made a string of influential, critically acclaimed works including Wild at Heart and Eraserhead

David Lynch, the maverick American director who sustained a successful mainstream career while also probing the bizarre, the radical and the experimental, has died aged 78.

“It is with deep regret that we, his family, announce the passing of the man and the artist, David Lynch,” read a Facebook post. “We would appreciate some privacy at this time. There’s a big hole in the world now that he’s no longer with us. But, as he would say, “Keep your eye on the donut and not on the hole.” It’s a beautiful day with golden sunshine and blue skies all the way.”

Last August, Lynch said he had been diagnosed with emphysema and in November, spoke further about his breathing difficulties. “I can hardly walk across a room,” he said. “It’s like you’re walking around with a plastic bag around your head.”

Deadline reported that sources had said Lynch’s health took a turn for the worse after he had to evacuate from his home due to the Los Angeles wildfires.

Naomi Watts and David Lynch on the set of Mulholland Drive.
Photograph: Studiocanal/Shutterstock

Lynch ploughed a highly idiosyncratic furrow in American cinema: from his beginnings as an art student making experimental short films, to the cult success of his surreal first feature Eraserhead, and on to a string of award-winning films including Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart and Mulholland Drive, as well as the landmark TV show Twin Peaks. He received three best director Oscar nominations (for Blue Velvet, The Elephant Man and Mulholland Drive), and was given an honorary lifetime achievement Oscar in 2019; he won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes film festival for Wild at Heart in 1990.

Lynch also avidly practiced transcendental meditation, setting up the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace in 2005; he also produced paintings, released albums (including collaborations with Julee Cruise, Lykke Li and Karen O), created a long-running YouTube weather report and opened a nightclub in Paris in 2011. 

In 2018 he explained his reclusive lifestyle to the Guardian: “I like to make movies. I like to work. I don’t really like to go out.” In 2024 he revealed his lifetime cigarette habit had resulted in debilitating emphysema.

Isabella Rossellini and producer David Lynch on the set of Zelly and Me. 
Photograph: Sunset Boulevard/Corbis/Getty Images

First published at The Guardian Australia, January  17, 2025

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ABC Classic and ABC Jazz in 2025

ABC Classic adds soprano Nina Korbe to our regular line-up in 2025, and welcomes back Martin Buzacott.

ABC Classic and ABC Jazz start our new program year on 20 January, bringing back your favourite music and presenters, along with four new programs.

New programs and presenters on ABC Classic

Australia's best classical concerts will feature in What's On with Alice Keath, weekly on Wednesday at 6pm. Find out the live performances happening near you every week.

Ed Le Brocq and Genevieve Lang are teaming up to answer all of your questions about classical music, diving deep into some of the most known and loved pieces in Music Class on Saturdays at 12pm.

And in two programs bringing listeners music to calm, relax and soothe, Taj Aldeeb will present Peaceful Piano (9pm Sundays) and Wind Down (weekdays at 11pm).

Following a short break, Martin Buzacott returns to share his creativity, humour and deep knowledge of classical music on Weekend Brunch, Saturdays and Sundays from 9am.

We also welcome award-winning First Nations soprano Nina Korbe to present The Musical Show (8pm Sundays).

Revealing the theme of our popular annual poll, this year's Classic 100 is all about the piano. 

We're asking Australian music lovers for their favourite pieces for the piano, from solos to sonatas, the music you hammered out at piano lessons to concertos from the concert hall. 

Stayed tuned for more information about voting soon.

Hear more from Australian Artists on ABC Jazz

James Valentine, Monica Trapaga, Mal Stanley and Eric Ajaye return to ABC Jazz in 2025.(ABC: Brad Cook)

2025 at ABC Jazz will see the return of presenters Eric Ajaye (Jazz Legends), Monica Trapaga (The Dinner Set), Mal Stanley (Jazztrack and Jazztrack Live) and James Valentine (Upbeat), offering a diverse selection of jazz music to listeners across the country.

Our Artist in Residence program will extend in 2025 to include a new music performance, with each featured artist invited into the ABC Jazz studio for a solo recording session.

The new edition of the program will launch in February 2025 with saxophonist Mike Rivett.

Access the daily web schedule 

• 
  Classic Breakfast with Dr Megan Burslem airs Monday to Friday, 6am–9am
• 
  Mornings with Russell Torrance moves to 9am–1pm (Monday to Friday)
• 
  Classic Drive with Vanessa Hughes air Monday to Friday, 3pm–6pm
• 
  What's On with Alice Keath airs Wednesdays, 6pm–7pm
• 
  Mindful Music (Mondays), Legends (Tuesdays), Passenger (Thursdays) and Game Show (Friday) move to 6pm
• 
  Evenings with Joel Carnegie moves to Monday to Friday 7pm-11pm
• 
  The Wind Down with Taj Aldeeb airs Weekdays, 11pm-midnight
• 
  Music Class with Ed Le Brocq and Genevieve Lang airs Saturdays, 12pm-1pm
• 
  Saturday Baroque becomes Weekend Baroque with Alice Keath, adding an additional day, now airing on Saturday and Sunday from 3pm
• 
  Duet with Tamara Anna-Cislowska moves to 12pm on Sundays
• 
  The Opera Show with Mairi Nicolson moves to 6pm on Sundays
• 
  The Musical Show with Nina Korbe moves to 8pm Sundays
• 
  Peaceful Piano with Taj Aldeeb airs at 9pm Sundays

Lunchtime concert will be presented by Genevieve Lang and Stéphanie Kabanyana Kanyandekwe every day at 1pm.

You can also still hear Mairi Nicolson on Saturday Night at the Opera at 8pm weekly, and For The God Who Sings with Stephen Watkins returns to Sunday nights, 10pm to midnight.

First published at ABC News, January 16, 2025

Does music make you more productive at work?

The best way to use music in the workplace depends on several factors, including your personality traits, what you’re doing, and what kind of music you’re listening to. Photo: Andrea Piacquadio

Can listening to music make you more productive at work? ANNA FIVEASH says there’s no one-size-fits-all answer to this question.

Listening to music can enhance our lives in all kinds of ways – many of us use it during exercise, to regulate our mood or in the workplace.

But can listening to background music while you work really make you more productive?

It’s a controversial topic. Some people swear by it, others find it painfully distracting. The research agrees there’s no one-size-fits-all answer to this question.

The best way to use music in the workplace depends on several factors, including your personality traits, what you’re doing, and what kind of music you’re listening to.

Here’s how to find out what works best for you.

Who you are

Your personality has a key influence on whether background music can boost productivity or be distracting in the workplace, which relates to your unique optimal level of arousal.

Arousal in this context relates to mental alertness, and the readiness of the brain to process new information. Background music can increase it.

Research suggests that being at an optimal level of arousal facilitates a state of “flow”, enhancing performance and productivity.

Introverts already have a high baseline level of internal arousal.

Adding background music might push them over their optimal level, likely reducing productivity.

Extroverts, on the other hand, have lower baseline levels of internal arousal, so need more external stimulation to perform at their optimal level.

This is why introverts may perform worse than extroverts with background music, especially when the music is highly arousing.

What you’re doing

Research has shown the nature of the task you’re doing can also have an important effect.

Because of connections between music and language in the brain, trying to read and write at the same time as listening to complex music – especially music with lyrics – can be particularly difficult.

However, if you’re doing a simple or repetitive task such as data entry or a manual task, having music on in the background can help with performance – particularly upbeat and complex music.

These findings could be related to music’s effects on motivation and maintaining attention, as well as activating reward networks in the brain.

The type of music itself

One important and often overlooked influence is what kind of music you choose to listen to.

Research has shown that fast and loud can be more detrimental to complex tasks, such as reading comprehension, than soft and slow music.

Other research found that listening to calming music can have benefits for  memory, while aggressive and unpleasant music can have the opposite effect.

However, these effects also depend on your personality, your familiarity with the music, and your musical preferences, so the type of music that works best will be different for everyone.

Music can be very rewarding and can benefit attention, mood and motivation.

Choosing music that is meaningful, rewarding and makes you feel good will likely help boost your performance, especially when performing simple tasks.

What about complex tasks?

It largely seems that the more complex or demanding the task is, the more distracting background music can be.

One way to harness the motivational and mood-boosting effects of music to help with your workplace productivity is to play music before doing your work.

Using music to boost your mood and enhance attention before starting a work task could help you be more productive in that task.

Playing music before a demanding task has been shown to boost language abilities in particular.

So if you’re about to do a cognitively demanding task involving reading and writing, and you feel that music might distract you if played at the same time, try listening to it just before doing the task.

Find what works for you

Music can be both helpful and detrimental for workplace productivity – the best advice is to experiment with different tasks and different types of music, to find out what works best for you.

Try to experiment with your favourite music first, while doing a simple task.

Does the music help you engage with the task? Or do you get distracted and start to become more absorbed in the music? Listening to music without lyrics and with a strong beat might help you focus on the task at hand.

If you find music is distracting to your work, try scheduling in some music breaks throughout the day. Listening to music during breaks could boost your mood and increase your motivation, thereby enhancing productivity.

Moving along with music is suggested to increase reward processing,  especially in social situations.

Dancing has the added bonus of getting you out of your chair and moving along in time, so bonus points if you are able to make it a dance break! 

Anna Fiveash, ARC DECRA Fellow (Researcher), Western Sydney University. Republished from The Conversation.

Published at Canberra City News, January 17, 2025

 

Aussies beating America and Europe in AI race: study

An increasing number of Australians are using AI technology despite reservations, a study shows.
(Jennifer Dudley Nicholson/AAP PHOTOS)

By Jennifer Dudley-Nicholson

More Australians are using artificial intelligence technology than their American and European counterparts, research from Google has found, and many are deploying it at work.

But Australians are still more concerned than excited about the potential impacts of the technology, even as their optimism about it grows.

Google released the findings on Friday in its second Life with AI study which asked more than 21,000 people worldwide for their thoughts on the technology.

The data comes as the Tech Council of Australia names AI the defining technology trend of 2025, and the federal government considers mandatory restrictions on its high-risk use in Australia.

The internet giant teamed with market researcher Ipsos to ask 1000 Australians about their use of generative AI tools and found almost half had used the technology in the past year, up 13 per cent from 2023.

The figure also represented greater use of AI than in the US (29 per cent) and Europe (42 per cent).

Almost three in four Australians using AI said they were deploying it at work to assist them with writing, brainstorming, problem-solving and summarising long or complex information.

Optimism about the technology also picked up during 2024, the survey found, with 52 per cent of Australians saying AI would benefit them and 47 per cent reporting that AI would change jobs and industries for the better.

Experience using the technology was helping to shift opinions about it, Google Australia and New Zealand managing director Mel Silva said, and would continue to evolve as more people tried it.

“We’re seeing a shift from experimentation to an understanding of the real-world benefits for Australians and our economy,” she said.

“After increasingly using the technology, more Australians believe AI will benefit them and have a positive impact on Australia’s economy.”

But even though more Australians used the technology, their concerns about AI still outweighed their excitement.

More than half of all Australians surveyed were concerned about its impact on society, economies and industries (53 per cent) – 10 per cent higher than the global average.

The findings arrived days after the Tech Council of Australia’s Tech Leaders Survey named AI as the leading technology trend of the year, followed by cybersecurity and sustainability.

Australian businesses would use AI technology to boost productivity in 2025, Tech Council chief executive Damian Kassabgi said, after a year of growth in 2024.

But firms will need to heed restrictions on high-risk uses of the technology likely to be revealed later in 2025 following the introduction of Voluntary AI Safety Standards in September.

First published by Australian Associated Press at Canberra City News, January 17, 2025

AI Brad Pitt dupes French woman out of €830,000

"It's awful that scammers take advantage of fans' strong connection with celebrities," a spokesperson for Brad Pitt said.

By Laura Gozzi

BBC News

A French woman who was conned out of €830,000 (£700,000; $850,000) by scammers posing as actor Brad Pitt has faced a huge wave of mockery, leading French broadcaster TF1 to withdraw a programme about her.

The primetime programme, which aired on Sunday, attracted national attention on interior designer Anne, 53, who thought she was in a relationship with Pitt for a year and a half.

She has since told a popular French YouTube show that she was not "crazy or a moron": "I just got played, I admit it, and that's why I came forward, because I am not the only one."

A representative for Pitt told US outlet Entertainment Weekly that it was "awful that scammers take advantage of fans' strong connection with celebrities" and that people shouldn't respond to unsolicited online outreach "especially from actors who have no social media presence."

Hundreds of social media users mocked Anne, who the programme said had lost her life's savings and tried to take her own life three times since the scam came to light.

Netflix France put out a post on X advertising "four films with Brad Pitt (for real)", while, in a now-deleted post, Toulouse FC said: "Hi Anne, Brad told us he would be at the stadium on Wednesday... and you?"

The club has since apologised for the post.

On Tuesday, TF1 said it had pulled the segment on Anne after her testimony had sparked "a wave of harassment" - although the programme can still be found online.

In the report, Anne said her ordeal began when she downloaded Instagram in February 2023, when she was still married to a wealthy entrepreneur.

She was immediately contacted by someone who said they were Pitt's mother, Jane Etta, who told Anne her son "needed a woman just like her".

Somebody purporting to be Pitt got in touch the next day, which set off alarm bells for Anne. "But as someone who isn't very used to social media, I didn't really know what was happening to me," she said.

At one point, "Brad Pitt" said he tried to send her luxury gifts but that he was unable to pay customs on them as his bank accounts were frozen due to his divorce proceedings with actor Angelina Jolie, prompting Anne to transfer €9000 to the scammers.

"Like a fool, I paid... Every time I doubted him, he managed to dissipate my doubts," she said.

The requests for money ramped up when the fake Pitt told Anne he needed cash to pay for kidney cancer treatment, sending her multiple AI-generated photos of Brad Pitt in a hospital bed. "I looked those photos up on the internet but couldn't find them so I thought that meant he had taken those selfies just for me," she said.

Meanwhile, Anne and her husband divorced, and she was awarded €775,000 - all of which went to the scammers.

"I told myself I was maybe saving a man's life," Anne said, who is in cancer remission herself.

Anne's daughter, now 22, told TF1 she tried to "get her mother to see reason" for over a year but that her mother was too excited. "It hurt to see how naive she was being," she said.

When images appeared in gossip magazines showing the real Brad Pitt with his new girlfriend Ines de Ramon, awakening suspicions in Anne, the scammers sent her an fake news report in which the AI-generated anchor talked about Pitt's "exclusive relationship with one special individual... who goes by the name of Anne."

The video comforted Anne for a short time, but when the real Brad Pitt and Ines de Ramon made their relationship official in June 2024, Anne decided to end things.

After scammers tried to get more money out of her under the guise of "Special FBI Agent John Smith," Anne contacted the police. An investigation is now under way.

The TF1 programme said the events left Anne broke, and that she has tried to end her life three times.

"Why was I chosen to be hurt this way?," a tearful Anne said. "These people deserve hell. We need to find those scammers, I beg you - please help me find them."

But in the YouTube interview on Tuesday Anne hit back at TF1, saying it had left out details on her repeated doubts over whether she was talking to the real Brad Pitt, and added that anyone could've fallen for the scam if they were told "words that you never heard from your own husband."

Anne said she was now living with a friend: "My whole life is a small room with some boxes. That's all I have left."

While many online users overwhelmingly mocked Anne, several took her side.

"I understand the comic effect but we're talking about a woman in her 50s who got conned by deepfakes and AI which your parents and grandparents would be incapable to spot," one popular post on X read.

An op-ed in newspaper Libération said Anne was a "whistleblower": "Life today is paved with cybertraps... and AI progress will only worsen this scenario."

First published at BBC News, January 15, 2025

Tragic Death of Vienna Boys Choir master, Oliver Stech

By Norman Lebrecht

Choral networks are sharing news of the sudden death on Monday night of Oliver Stech, chorus master of the Vienna Boys Choir since 2011. The exact cause is not yet known.

Oliver led the famed choir on tours of Europe, Asia, South America, and the US.

From his official bio: Stech is responsible for the boys’ repertoire; he conducts choir and solo rehearsals and prepares the boys for the sung services in Vienna’s Imperial Chapel. In addition, he trains the boys for productions at Vienna’s two opera houses, and for performances with conductors including Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti, Franz Welser-Möst, and Simone Young. Appearances on radio and television, sound recordings, and film shoots are also part of the choir’s routine. Stech conducted the boys on the set of Curt Faudon’s films Songs for Mary (2013) and Good Shepherds (2017), in Palestine, Italy, and Austria.

The tragic news was circulated to the boys’ families by the Vorstand and Kollegium of Campus Augarten:

With deep dismay and endless sadness we heard from his parents that our friend, colleague, teacher and Kapellmeister Oliver Stech died in a tragic accident on the night of Monday to Tuesday. At this point in time we know nothing more… Please respect the privacy of the Stech family.

First published at Slipped Disc, January 15, 2025