The Limits Of Knowledge? Are there limits to what it is possible for us to know? "The last century brought the first hints of fundamental, inherent limits on the knowable. Kurt Godel discovered, to everyone's shock, that some statements in mathematics can be neither proved nor disproved. And physicists showed that the laws of quantum mechanics prevent us from knowing simultaneously both the position and the momentum of a subatomic particle. Will the world continue to yield to man's curiosity, or will we encounter evermore Godelian limits?" The Wall Street Journal 05/30/03
Posted: 06/02/2003 10:04 pm
Mislaid Picasso Print Finds Its Way Home Last week a man left a case with a rare Picasso in it in a subway station. "The man who found it is a mystery. But he, in turn, left it leaning against a wall on the Upper West Side, under a poster advertising bagels. The next man to find it, a sidewalk book vendor, took it home to Queens. He liked the portfolio. No idea there was a Picasso in there, and he would not have picked it out if he had looked. Just another drawing of two guys on a bench. But soon, it was all over the papers, and his wife figured it out first. He called the man who lost the portfolio and inquired about the reward. Next thing he knew, the police were waiting for him at his corner today when he showed up for work." The New York Times 06/03/03
Posted: 06/02/2003 9:02 pm
Damien Hirst In Space There is a flurry of spacecraft from earth on its way to Mars and beyond. "For now, Beagle 2 has stolen the limelight. It goes into space with a spot painting by the British artist Damien Hirst - which also acts as a colour calibration chart for its cameras - and a callsign composed by the Britpop band Blur." The Guardian (UK) 06/02/03
Posted: 06/02/2003 6:36 pm
Canada's Classic (Controversial) Artwork (They Took It Down After 8 Days) Canada's most controversial artwork? It's got to be "Greg Curnoe's notorious magnum opus of 1968, the 170-metre-long Homage to the R-34 (the title refers to the first dirigible to cross the Atlantic to North America from Britain), otherwise known as the Dorval Mural, a spectacular, Technicolor work that existed at its intended site - the arrivals area of the Montreal airport - for just eight days before being packed up and stored. The mural was deemed by the federal Department of Transport that commissioned it to be too controversial, too provocatively antiwar and anti-American, to greet our Vietnam-weary visitors from south of the 49th parallel. Since its fiery demise, Homage to the R-34 has remained sequestered in storage crates, briefly coming up for air at the National Gallery of Canada in 1998, when the mural was finally officially transferred to its collection." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 06/02/03
Posted: 06/02/2003 6:30 pm
Chapmans: We Don't Welcome Casual Attention Now that the Chapman Brothers have been shortlisted for this year's Turner Prize, a wider audience is sure to be examining their work. The inevitable casual examinations of their work isn't exactly a good thing, they say. "The reason I say that is not because I intend to offend people who have a casual encounter with art because casual encounters can be very rewarding and interesting. But I'm obsessed with countering the idea that it's necessary to those people's lives and the necessity is brought to bear by people who have an institutional interest in art." BBC` 05/30/03
Posted: 06/02/2003 8:08 am
- Just Who Are The Chapmans? "The Chapman brothers are the best-known of the shortlisted artists, and recently hit the headlines for adding comical and grotesque faces to Goya etchings. Their work is often restricted to adult viewings because of its content, and they took part in 1997's Sensation exhibition with dolls with penises instead of noses." BBC 05/30/03
Posted: 06/02/2003 8:03 am
NY Phil/Carnegie Merger Could Resonate In Pittsburgh News of the impending merger of the New York Philharmonic with Carnegie Hall has some observers of the classical scene in Pittsburgh thinking that the embattled Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra could take a page from the Phil's book. "Given the national significance of the Philharmonic and Carnegie Hall, the unexpected consolidation raises the possibility that a stronger collaboration between the Symphony and the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust could be viewed more favorably as a way to stabilize the Symphony's finances. The Trust, an arts presenting organization that owns four theaters in the Downtown Cultural District, has for five years successfully brought the PSO and Downtown arts groups together in its 'shared services' initiative." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 06/03/03
Posted: 06/03/2003 6:50 am
NY Phil Moved Quickly, Quietly on Carnegie Deal When the decision to move the New York Philharmonic's home base back to Carnegie Hall after 40 years as the anchoring tenant at Lincoln Center was announced this past weekend, it came like a bolt out of the blue. There had been no substantial rumors of an impending deal, little to no speculation that the Phil might be pulling out of Avery Fisher Hall, and no public indication that Carnegie had much interest in reacquiring the orchestra as a tenant. In the rush to get a deal done, in fact, the Phil left some of its board members and supporters out of the process entirely. Lincoln Center officials, meanwhile, claim to have been broadsided by the deal, with no opportunity given for them to make a counteroffer. The New York Times 06/03/03
Posted: 06/03/2003 6:32 am
- Times Editors: Lincoln Center Needs to Reinvent "To many observers over the past few years, it has often seemed as if Lincoln Center was too busy competing with itself and that it had lost sight of its larger public mission. It was one thing for City Opera to think about leaving. It is something altogether different when the Philharmonic packs up. The charmed circle has been broken." The New York Times 06/03/03
Posted: 06/03/2003 6:31 am
- Will Carnegie Gain The Phil But Lose Its Soul? With the New York Philharmonic set to take up residence in Carnegie Hall, the nation's premier presenter of touring orchestras is set to gain the services of one of the world's most well-known orchestras, and lose a lot of its scheduling flexibility. Some observers are worried that Carnegie's famed schedule of touring orchestras, featuring perhaps the finest annual array of ensembles anywhere in the world, will have to be drastically scaled back to accomodate the Phil. Carnegie Hall execs insist that they can be both a home to the Phil and the top presenter of out-of-town ensembles, but many have their doubts. New York Sun 06/03/03
Posted: 06/03/2003 6:31 am
Canadian Musicians - The Road To Success Is Through Europe Canadian music acts have a tough time getting recognition at home. So they try to make it big in the US. But though many Canadian musicians have hit it big there, it's getting tougher. "Smartening up, many underground acts have been looking elsewhere for international record deals. Like the jazz greats in post-First World War Paris or the ignored-at-home Detroit techno DJs in 1980s Europe, Canadian artists are discovering the Old World can provide a more receptive audience than the new. Ironically, that transatlantic success is often enough to garner American attention." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 06/02/03
Posted: 06/02/2003 6:26 pm
A New Gehry On The Skyline LA's new Frank Gehry-designed Disney Hall is turning heads (and it hasn't even opened yet). "The city centre more in need than even Bilbao of something worth looking at has got a shimmering pile of twisting metal. Yet this isn't 'me too' urbanism, more 'hey buddy, we were here first'. The $274m (£150m) Walt Disney Concert Hall was designed before Bilbao (in the late 1980s) but was held back by funding and other problems, which makes it the prototype architectural regenerator, a pivotal, if tardy, building. The hall is an exuberant pile of twisting steel encasing public spaces of generosity and wit, finished internally in Douglas fir, light streaming in where the external structure peels away from the façade - this is a building with no windows but plenty of light. It could exert a major impact on the city's feeble downtown, its contorted, lumpy profile looming impressively over the skyline." Financial Times 06/02/03
Posted: 06/02/2003 5:10 pm
How Did 9/11 Change The Arts? "It's going on two years now, and the work is just beginning. Artists found a daunting, inevitable theme for the 21st century in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. A spate of recent works -- in film, fiction, music and poetry -- suggests how broad and multivalenced the responses will be as this singular national trauma continues to sink in and penetrate our consciousness." San Francisco Chronicle 06/03/03
Posted: 06/03/2003 6:54 am
Going After Europe's VAT Tax A collection of celebrity musicians is calling for drastic cuts to the European Union's "Value Added Tax" (VAT) on CDs and other recorded media, to bring the tax rate in line with what consumers pay for newspapers, books, and concert tickets. The VAT is similar to U.S. sales tax, and just as a state may set its own sales tax, an EU nation may determine its own VAT rate on a variety of products. VAT tax on CDs runs between 15% and 25%, while the rate on books is closer to 5%. BBC 06/03/03
Posted: 06/03/2003 5:36 am
America's Top Arts Cities Which American city is tops in the arts? If you said New York, you're wrong. At least according to AmericanStyle magazine. The Magazine ranks America's best arts cities. "The survey - something less than scientific, since its results are based on reader votes - purports to show that the Midwest is emerging as a new area of artistic influence. Chicago, for example, moved up to No. 1 from its No. 5 position in 2002. And newcomers in the top 25 include Milwaukee and Columbus, with Cleveland returning to the list for the first time since 1998." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 06/02/03
Posted: 06/02/2003 9:08 pm
After The Building, What? Building a new performing arts center is only the beginning. After it's beuilt you have to invest money on what goes inside it. Mangers of the new Miami Dade performing arts center in Florida project it will take a $100 million to get programming and resident companies on sound footing once the hall opens. With the Florida Philharmonic recently imploding, some wonder if the community is ready to step up and make the investment required. Miami Herald 06/02/03
Posted: 06/02/2003 8:52 pm
Barenboim Still Beethoven-Crazy After All These Years "Like a comet that returns every 15 years or so, Daniel Barenboim is playing all 32 Beethoven piano sonatas again." These days, the omnipresent Barenboim is better known as conductor than pianist, and most of his recent successes have been in the realm of Wagner opera, a far cry from the delicate complexity of Beethoven. David Patrick Stearns is intrigued by Barenboim's continuing obsession with the sonatas, and also by the performer's seemingly endless ability to rethink works he has played hundreds of times before. Philadelphia Inquirer 06/03/03
Posted: 06/03/2003 6:45 am
Faith And Yann Martel Booker Prize winner Yann Martel has become famous, and "now has a life which includes arguing his way through forums such as the Hong Kong Literary Festival, because of his novel about a 450 pound tiger in a lifeboat with an Indian teenager, Pi Patel. Pi embraces Hinduism, Christianity and Islam and debunks agnosticism and an excessive reliance on reason, which the novel describes as 'fool's gold for the bright'." Financial Times 05/30/03
Posted: 06/02/2003 5:22 pm
Little Shop's Broadway Jump Scuttled A Miami-based revival of Little Shop of Horrors that had been expected to leap to Broadway this summer has instead been stopped cold by its producers, who say that the production simply isn't ready for the big-time just yet. The show originated as a surprise off-Broadway hit in the 1980s, and has never run on Broadway. The cancellation marks the second time in as many years that a much-anticipated South Florida-based production has sputtered on its way to Broadway success: last year's Urban Cowboy made it to New York, but closed almost immediately in the face of withering reviews and public disinterest. Miami Herald 06/03/03
Posted: 06/03/2003 6:18 am
Plagiarism or The Sincerest Form Of Flattery? When it was pointed out to Stephen Howarth that portions of his much-lauded 1988 biography of Admiral Horatio Nelson appeared to have made their way, slightly paraphrased, into a Booker-winning novel published in 1999 by Barry Unsworth, Howarth was understandably upset. But is the use of historical fact in a work of fiction really plagiarism, even if the wording is similar to an excerpt of a previously published work? Unsworth and his publisher think not, and while Unsworth has expressed regret over the incident, he has also suggested to Howarth that "to have exerted an influence on another writer must after all be a source of gratification." Howarth is not in the least gratified. Boston Globe 06/03/03
Posted: 06/03/2003 6:00 am
Be-Littling The Big Read Sales of 100 favorite books chosen by the BBC in its Big Read program have soared, as people check out what's on the list. Bookseller "WH Smith, however, has taken a different tack. It has launched a set of 'Little Reads', flimsy little paperbacks priced at £1 apiece, reprinting just the first chapter of a book from the Big Read 100 as a 'sampler'." David Sexton writes that it's a "potty" idea. London Evening Standard 06/02/03
Posted: 06/02/2003 6:41 pm
Battle For A Smut-Free World "Three small companies that manufacture technologies that filter out the sex, gore and violence from DVD movies are hoping to avoid a protracted legal fight with Hollywood. ClearPlay, Family Shield Technologies and Trilogy Studios filed a motion Friday in the United States District Court in Denver to dismiss claims that their products infringe on the copyrights of motion pictures. The companies sell hardware and software applications that allow consumers to automatically skip or mute obscene or sexually explicit content in movies. They claim that the technology does not alter the movie itself, but customizes the way the film is viewed." Wired 06/03/03
Posted: 06/03/2003 5:46 am
FCC Decision Angers TV Writers, Pleases Execs "Many producers and writers have maintained that a concentration of media ownership has led to a decrease in diverse and experimental television and that the new rules would make the situation worse because fewer outlets would be available and open to creative program ideas. The executives who supported the looser regulations said those arguments were ridiculous at a time when the average household receives about 100 channels of television. They also said good ideas would always be welcomed in a business desperate for hits. In a sense, the F.C.C.'s decision reignited a battle that goes back at least a decade." The New York Times 06/03/03
Posted: 06/03/2003 5:05 am
- What Does FCC Deregulation Mean? "Despite the disingenuous if not wholly cynical blather of FCC Chairman Michael Powell, Monday's vote is antithetical to promoting diversity and will allow, if not guarantee, that Americans are served an ever-more-homogenized news and entertainment product by the same handful of gigantic entities that already control the majority of the most popular venues and channels. If you doubt it, all you have to do is turn on your radio." St. Paul Pioneer-Press 06/02/03
Posted: 06/03/2003 5:02 am
- FCC Throws Radio Listeners A Bone With No Marrow The new FCC rules governing media ownership actually tighten regulations on how many radio stations a single entity may own, even as it relaxes the same rules for TV and print media. It is a move the commission's chairman says is in response to public concern that a few mega-companies now control the lion's share of U.S. radio programming. But the wording of the new rules will actually tighten the death grip on the industry of the biggest radio giant, Clear Channel, since its current station ownership, now over the new limit in many markets, has been grandfathered into the new regulations. In other words, Clear Channel can't get any bigger, but no one else can even attempt to catch up. The New York Times 06/03/03
Posted: 06/03/2003 5:01 am
Satellite Radio Catching On After some initial resistance, digital satellite radio appears to be catching on with consumers in the US. The two satellite radio services are piling up new customers, and equipment to play the new programming is becoming more available. Wired 06/02/03
Posted: 06/02/2003 9:56 pm
Is Australia Bleeding Its Public Broadcaster Dry? Australia's public broadcaster ABC is being bled of funding. "It's a tried and true tactic. You distract the rest of the media from the issue of the long-term, incremental de-funding of the ABC by lobbing a few verbal grenades in Aunty's direction. Commentators become so fixated on reporting the resulting explosions and collateral damage, they forget to take a step back and analyse the political and cultural implications of that de-funding process. What we need is a discussion about the vital role of the ABC in informing Australians about public affairs." The Age (Melbourne) 06/02/03
Posted: 06/02/2003 5:05 pm
FCC Relaxes Media Ownership Rules The FCC has relaxed controls on media ownership. "The Republican-controlled Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 - along party lines - to adopt a series of changes favored by media companies. These companies argued that existing ownership rules were outmoded on a media landscape that has been substantially altered by cable TV, satellite broadcasts and the Internet. Critics say the eased restrictions would likely lead to a wave of mergers landing a few giant media companies in control of even more of what the public sees, hears and reads." The New York Times (AP) 06/02/03
Posted: 06/02/2003 9:27 am
Mountain Dance Project Bandaloop is "a group in Oakland that combines dance with the art of climbing." The company "seeks out such places as the 12,000-foot Sawtooth Ridge in the Sierra' where the dancers "hang by ropes and perform choreography in the air." San Jose Mercury-News 06/02/03
Posted: 06/02/2003 9:49 pm
Miami Ballet's Stellar Season Miami Ballet is flourishing. The company has just had a record year, selling 3,000 more tickets than last season, "surpassed expectations on earned and contributed income and ended the year with a surplus." The reason? "People like spectacles" and that's what they got.
Miami Herald 06/02/03
Posted: 06/02/2003 8:48 pm
