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05-30-07
music to get high by
Can a CD actually make you high? This is the bold claim of the people at I-Doser.com, whose Recreational Simulations CDs are said to 'synchronise your brainwaves to achieve a simulated state of mind'. Each track contains 'advanced binaural beats' mixed with a 'carrier tone of white noise and ambient soundscapes', producing in the listener a range of altered states including 'mood lift, euphoria, sedation and hallucination'. You can find the entire article on The Guardian.
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05-29-07
a play about falluja finds an audience in london
Soon after Falluja became a symbol of the horrific violence and aggressive American tactics in Iraq, the theater director Jonathan Holmes listened to a group of British generals and journalists conduct a post-mortem on what had happened during the assault on that town. ... Thus the play 'Fallujah,' now at the Old Truman Theater in London's East End, was born. The play (which uses the preferred British spelling in its title) is the latest entrant in the growing canon of documentary theater that concentrates on Iraq.Read the rest of this article on The New York Times .
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05-29-07
after christmas - the cd goes down?
Despite costly efforts to build buzz around new talent and thwart piracy, CD sales have plunged more than 20 percent this year, far outweighing any gains made by digital sales at iTunes and similar services. 'Everyone in the industry thinks of this Christmas as the last big holiday season for CD sales, and then everything goes down. Read more about this on The New York Times.
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05-29-07
in our responses to art, the unconscious is key
The connections that paintings and dance performances, movies and novels and music make to us beyond our conscious perceptions of them are primary and transporting. Our unconscious, deep-seated responses are what bring us back to the arts for more and more, nourishing and renewing us just as food and air and water do. At the same time, we're carried away from our sensory and analytical selves, lifted or plunged into a web of emotion and association, a fretwork of glinting filaments radiating out in so many directions. Read the whole article on San Francisco Chronicle.
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05-28-07
china - crazy about pianos
The Chinese are crazy about piano playing. Among city dwellers, there's been nothing like this enthusiasm since the '80s, when an embrace of the Japanese-originated Suzuki teaching method created a national army of child violinists. According to some estimates, as many as 15 million hopefuls in China -- most of them young -- are toiling to gain proficiency in this highly competitive skill, and the number is growing. Those unable to make it through the tough entrance exams of the country's nine overflowing conservatories opt for one of hundreds of private piano schools sprouting all over.
Read the entire article on Los Angeles Times.
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05-28-07
radio's reinvention (it's happening in front of our ears)
Audience share for music is eroding, as listeners bolt bland formats and canned disc jockeys. Some listeners end up plugging in their iPods or getting satellite radio. Others are migrating to talk radio. The rise of FM in the 1960s was supposed to signal the death of AM. In 10 years, it might be the other way around.
Read the whole story on The Plain Dealer.
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05-28-07
music in our genes
Scientists have discovered a way to convert the DNA patterns that code for proteins into rhythmic piano notes that sound pleasant to a musician's ear. The conversion method could not only make the otherwise daunting field of genomic coding more approachable to the general public and even children but could also provide scientists -- including those who are vision-impaired -- an entirely new way for analyzing proteins.
Read more about this on Discovery.
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05-27-07
pondering an art market fall
The average contemporary work cost $715,144 this year at Sotheby's in New York, five times as much as in 1998, the auction house said. So when will the fall come (and it will).
You can find the entire article on Bloomberg.
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05-27-07
an author on the weirdness of completing a book
A few minutes before starting this blog I emailed my agent with the completed manuscript for my latest contribution to bathroom literature: Annus Horribilis. It's all done. I've finished another book, and now - I feel quite weird. ... The dominating feature of the last six months of my life has disappeared. My time is my own again, but I'm not certain whether this means freedom, or just emptiness...
Read more about this on The Guardian.
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05-27-07
can your computer pick the hits?
The business of picking hit music is a strange alchemy. So could computers really bring some order to the process? Malcom Gladwell explores the idea...
You can find out more about this on The New Yorker.
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05-26-07
study: male brains decline more than female brains
Certain differences seem to be inherent in male and female brains: Men are better at maintaining and manipulating mental images (useful in mathematical reasoning and spatial skills), while women tend to excel at retrieving information from their brain's files (helpful with language skills and remembering the locations of objects).
Read the whole article on LiveScience.
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05-26-07
art en route to dresden stopped by moscow customs
In a sign of Russian paranoia about satirising public figures, customs officials turned away six works of art, two featuring the president. Natalia Milovzorova, a spokeswoman for the Marat Guelman gallery, which was sending the work by a Siberian art collective, Blue Noses, said the decision was 'absurd' but had been overcome by sending a digital copy. She added: 'It's as if we returned to dissident times.
Read the whole article on The Guardian.
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05-26-07
will venice biennale start selling art?
The Venice Biennale used to sell art but discontinued the practice in 1968 over concerns the Biennale was not "tainted with commerce". But now the idea is raised again. "A new art fair, Cornice, which takes place in Venice from 7 to 10 June to coincide with the opening of the biennale will include 60 dealers--80% of them international names. It has raised the whole question of sales again."
Read more about this on The The Art Newspaper.
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05-24-07
the inescapable literary lure of the carp
In America, it's often said that baseball attracts more writers than it does athletes. In Britain, the same is apparently true of... um, fishing? Fishing is about the closest you can get to physically experiencing poetry. It is a pursuit based on contemplation and solitude that involves an appreciation of the elements; it is a game of chance, hope, escapism; a step into the murky waters of the unknown. Read the entire article on The Guardian.
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05-24-07
smoking in films: a bad habit is an artistic tool
Smoking and art -- or at least artists -- of all varieties have long made steamy bedfellows. That's why, despite the widespread acceptance in this country that cigarettes are the devil's own nostrils, the Motion Picture Assn. of America's recent announcement that it would now 'consider smoking as a factor' when making its ratings decisions feels like yet another nail in the coffin of grown-up entertainment. Read more about smoking in films on The Los Angeles Times.
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05-24-07
the arts also cure cancer and make you beautiful
Nonprofit arts groups, including museums, orchestras, theaters and dance companies, contributed $166.2 billion and 5.7 million jobs to the U.S. economy in 2005, according to an advocacy group urging more funding for the arts... The economic effect of these nonprofits grew by 24%, or 11% adjusted for inflation, between 2000 and 2005, according to the report.
Read the entire article on The Los Angeles Times.
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05-23-07
back to the future (the 3-d glasses are cooler now)
Last week the next phase in the theatrical viewing experience took a significant leap forward, as Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson signed on to direct and produce for Paramount's DreamWorks Studios a trilogy of 3-D movies about the intrepid Belgian comic-book hero Tintin. And on Saturday nearly an hour of footage from the 3-D concert film of the Irish rock band U2 made its debut at the Cannes Film Festival. So is 3-D the future of moviegoing? Some major players would like it to be.
You can find the entire article on The New York Times.
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05-23-07
nonprofit arts are growing again, study says
The nonprofit segment of the arts industry is robust economically and attracting more people to its workforce, according to a new national survey. The nonprofit arts sector generates $166 billion in total U.S. economic activity, says a study being released today. 'Arts & Economic Prosperity III' was conducted by Americans for the Arts with data analysis provided by economists from Georgia Tech. 'This shows the arts have bounced back from the slide after 9/11,' said Randy Cohen, vice president of policy and research at Americans for the Arts.
Read the entire article on Washington Post.
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05-23-07
stories we tell about ourselves may help to form us
For more than a century, researchers have been trying to work out the raw ingredients that account for personality.... They have largely ignored the first-person explanation -- the life story that people themselves tell about who they are, and why. ... Yet in the past decade or so a handful of psychologists have argued that the quicksilver elements of personal narrative belong in any three-dimensional picture of personality. And a burst of new findings are now helping them make the case.
Read all about it on The New York Times.
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05-22-07
iran up in arms over another movie
Only months after expressing outrage over what it deemed the racist content of the Hollywood war movie 300, the government of Iran is protesting the inclusion of "an animated film about a woman growing up in revolutionary Iran" in the Cannes Film Festival. Calling the film's selection a transparently political act, Iranian officials say that the film paints "an unreal picture of the outcomes and achievements of the Islamic revolution."
Read the whole article on The Age.
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05-22-07
the rise of the west western
Civilization is awfully fond of itself and its accomplishments, which, taken as a whole, are considerable. But "how did the West emerge... out of what was once a diverse set of has-been or backwater cultures of a relatively small geographic region roughly contained in the boundaries of modern Europe? This is no mere academic question. That transformation is one of the great phenomena of world history."
Read the rest of this story on The New York Times.
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05-22-07
the delicate balance between serious & accessible
Museums are constantly criticized for dumbing down their content, but there are still plenty of staid, musty old institutions out there presenting their collections in a manner that suggests that none but serious scholars are welcome. But maybe the main problem is that so few museums even try to find a middle road...
Read all about it on The Guardian.
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05-21-07
is art the new politics?
Madeleine Bunting says that artists have begun taking on the roles that increasingly cautious politicians are afraid to play. "As professional politics becomes ever more remote, the most fraught controversies of our time are migrating into art... Art can never do the messy business of politics - the negotiation and compromise. But politicians are now grappling with a new politics about how to change the way people behave in their private lives: how they eat, travel, shop, exercise, drink. And art can open minds and change hearts in a way that our politics is singularly failing to do."
Read the entire article on The Guardian.
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05-21-07
all i know i learned by 12?
New research suggests some of the brain's basic building blocks for learning are nearing adult levels by age 11 or 12.
Find out more about your brain on Discovery.
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05-21-07
baghdad symphony plays on despite threats
Amazingly, as an increasingly brutal civil war decimates Iraq's capital city, the Baghdad Symphony is still performing regularly. But even the orchestra, which has been held up many times as a symbol of hope for a broken country, has been sustaining losses. One musician has been killed in sectarian violence, and many others "have received death threats, must practice in semi-secrecy and don't dare show their faces to our television cameras." And just to add insult to injury, American and Iraqi soldiers recently raided the home of one of the BSO's violinists, and smashed his 19th-century violin to pieces.
You can find the entire article on ABC World News.
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05-18-07
embrace your mediocrity
Amateur orchestras are everywhere, fed and cared for by groups of musicians whose commitment to music is matched only by their inability to play it at anything approaching a professional level. So why not embrace the half-baked quality of performance? Scotland's Really Terrible Orchestra (yes, that's really its name) has done exactly that: "the RTO website proudly states that the main ethos of the orchestra is a commitment to lowering standards wherever possible.''
Read the entire article on The Scotsman.
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05-18-07
uk to extend copyright to 70 years?
Some British MPs are calling for copyright protection to be extended to 70 years. "The issue is pressing because some of the most popular acts from the late 1950s and early 1960s will start to fall out of the copyright in the next few years, just as the music industry is looking to its digital archives to make up for falling CD sales."
Read more about this on The Guardian.
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05-18-07
tomorrow's web of creativity
Look at video responses to YouTube videos; these are signs that people want to create. Perhaps a more nuanced point is that most of us are not creative because the world doesn't make it easy for us to be creative. In this next phase of the web we are going to use technology to make creativity easier and I think we are going to see everybody wanting to be creative. This means that people better rethink the nature of media.
find the entire story on The Guardian.
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05-17-07
mumblypeg - why do actors mumble onstage?
Many theatres have given in to boosting the voices of actors in straight plays which would otherwise have no chance of ever reaching beyond row eight - never mind the back of the stalls. Does this matter at a time when it's taken for granted that any self-respecting musical performer will automatically be fitted with a head-mike? Why shouldn't straight drama feel free to follow suit?
Find the rest of this article on The Guardian.
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05-17-07
budapest orchestra at a crossroads
The Budapest Symphony is one of Europe's oldest orchestras, established in 1853 and playing concerts ever since in the celebrated Hungarian State Opera House. But this year, the Hungarian government declined to pay the usual subsidy that kept the orchestra afloat, and the organization finds itself scrambling to find new revenues to replace the public funds.
More about this on The Budapest Sun.
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05-17-07
motor mouths
Since the 1960s, most artists have been audiotaped or videotaped talking about their work; because of changes in how they are trained, artists have become increasingly sophisticated in talking about their work and cooperating with critics to shape the interpretation of it. But where does this leave the historian?
Read the whole article on The New York Sun.
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05-16-07
sticker shock for a cannes premiere
The budget for an over-the-top Hollywood premiere rarely goes above $750,000. But when the same event is thrown 6,000 miles away, the economics are turned upside-down. When Sofia Coppola traveled to Cannes last year to introduce 'Marie Antoinette,' the tab ran more than $42,000 -- just for the filmmaker's hair and makeup stylists. Travel to the south of France is costly enough, but the meter really starts spinning once you land. Read all about it on Los Angeles Times.
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05-16-07
u.s. movie ratings - keeping us safe from the world
So the Motion Picture Association wants to classify smoking in movies. Maybe some other ratings are in order too? "O rating: Films that represent eating in 'an exuberant or overly celebratory fashion, without fair time and emphasis given to the benefits of moderation, exercise and/or occasional fasting' would earn an O (for Obesity). Scenes of holiday meals, carbohydrate-heavy breakfasts, enticing preparations of animal protein and empty-calorie snacking will all be considered."
You can find the entire article on San Francisco Chronicle.
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05-16-07
does plagiarism mean plagiarism? (and who cares?)
How can we get along without plagiarism? Jonathan Lethem makes an argument that culture is a mash of influences and borrowings from other culture. As he demonstrates in an essay in Harper's. "After 10 pages of carefully constructed argument against 'those who view the culture as a market in which everything of value should be owned by someone or other,' Lethem reveals that just about every line in his piece is something he 'stole, warped, and cobbled together' from the work of others. He then annotates his borrowings.''
You can read the rest of this article on Washington Post.
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05-15-07
British Library Damages Book
The British Library has damaged a historic diary from the 1700s. Its private owner, a descendant of Thomas Tyldesley, the diary's author, has described how he 'wanted to weep' when he collected the 96-page manuscript last week and discovered that someone had spilt oil across its pages - staining them and making some of them completely illegible. Its original leather front cover had also been cut off. Read the whole story on The Times.
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05-15-07
hollywood speeds up in preparation for possible strike
Hollywood studios are speeding production on movies and TV shows, preparing for a possible strike by writers and more trouble next year when contracts with actors and directors expire.
Read the entire article on The Seattle Times.
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05-15-07
new rome high-tech subway runs into ruins
Planners aim to send the new C line under the city centre at a depth of 30 metres, well beneath the archaeological treasures that litter Rome. Stations will also be built deep underground, but even the simple task of digging entrances and exits is proving a headache and could mean the scrapping of the Largo Torre Argentina stop, which serves crowded tourist sights such as the Pantheon.
More about this on The Guardian.
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05-14-07
celebrating the story-tellers
Short fiction has always had a tough time finding a market.
Obviously, novels are more central in our culture. They're easier to sell and they're easier to make a living from. The question is: Why?
Read more about story telling on Washington Post.
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05-14-07
a culture of praise - good for kids?
A personality test for narcissism given to college students every year shows an inexorable rise, with today's students being on average 30 percent more narcissistic than the students of 1982. Substitute 'self-esteem' for 'narcissism' and the results suddenly look rosy, but you simply can't, because all the $10 trophies and the lavish praise of mediocrity, or even failure, doesn't really bolster kids' self-worth. They drink the Kool-Aid, but they also know it.
Read the rest of this article on Slate.
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05-14-07
are niches killing our interest in new ideas?
As America's cultural and entertainment spheres continue to splinter into ever-smaller niche markets, Dominic Papatola says that the arts are running the risk of becoming an unending parade of group-think. "Lobbies are one of the dwindling number of places where liberals and conservatives, bulls and bears, for-its and against-its can tolerate standing in proximity to each other. But if the arts become more concerned about speaking to a specific group at the expense of others, patrons will no longer have to face the threat - or the opportunity - of sitting next to someone who doesn't believe as they do."
You can read the rest of this article on St. Paul Pioneer Press.
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