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Backtracking On The Mozart Effect "The 'Mozart effect,' which was first suggested in a study in 1993, showed that listening to 10 minutes of Mozart before a spatial skills test appeared to improve performance. Scientists soon reported a 'Schubert effect' and even a 'Stephen King effect'; hearing lively prose from the author before spatial tests also appeared to improve scores. Now researchers are discovering why the so-called Mozart effect happens, and they are finding that the benefits of music lessons may have been overstated." USAToday 08/19/03
Posted: 08/20/2003 6:03 pm
Reducing Ideas To Slides (The Quickest Way To Kill Ideas?) "Slideware -computer programs for presentations -is everywhere: in corporate America, in government bureaucracies, even in our schools. Several hundred million copies of Microsoft PowerPoint are churning out trillions of slides each year. Slideware may help speakers outline their talks, but convenience for the speaker can be punishing to both content and audience. The standard PowerPoint presentation elevates format over content, betraying an attitude of commercialism that turns everything into a sales pitch." Wired 08/03
Posted: 08/20/2003 5:33 pm
Art To Represent All We Do As A Government Agency The US Interior Department is creating art on a grand scale. "Employing artistic symbolism, the mural is intended to present their missions and activities in terms of Norton's oft-expressed philosophy of arriving at environmental and conservation decisions through "collaboration and cooperation" (i.e., with the help of mining, oil drilling and logging companies). Not even Robert Rauschenberg, with all his glued-together-trash collages, attempted anything so ambitious." Chicago Tribune 08/21/03
Posted: 08/21/2003 8:49 am
Can The Whitney Be Saved? Hilton Kramer writes that the Whitney Museum was founded with high ideals but has sunk to "parlous condition." Kramer wishes new director Adam Weinberg good luck - "he returns to a museum that many artists now despise—for the right reasons, too—and the public has every reason to distrust. I wish him luck. He will certainly need it, if the recent track record of the Whitney’s board of trustees is any guide." New York Observer 08/20/03
Posted: 08/20/2003 5:21 pm
Painting - Nothing New Under The Sun In 17,000 Years Picasso, on visiting Lascaux, reportedly remarked that "we have discovered nothing new in art in 17,000 years." NYU professor Randall White writes in a new book that, "all of the major representational techniques were known at least by the Magdalenian [Period, beginning about 18,000 years ago]; oil- and water-based polychrome painting, engraving, bas-relief sculpture, sculpture in the round, charcoal and manganese crayon drawing, molded clay, fired ceramic figurines, shading, perspective drawing, false relief, brush painting, stamping and stenciling." Japan Times 08/17/03
Posted: 08/20/2003 5:02 pm
Bay Area Early Music Fest Canceled Cal Performances has dropped its biennial early-music festival, the Berkeley Festival & Exhibition, scheduled for next summer, citing lack of funds and a weak economy. "Begun in 1990, the festival produced 15 to 35 concerts every other year featuring early-music artists from around the world. The cost of producing it ranged from $250,000 to $750,000." San Francisco Chronicle 08/21/03
Posted: 08/21/2003 10:52 am
Taking A Harder Listen At Bard When Bard College's new performing arts center opened last April, it got admiring reviews from critics, both for its looks and its acoustics. "Now, after a fuller range of musical and dramatic events at the just-completed annual Bard Music Festival and the new Bard SummerScape, one can better judge those acoustics — along with the aesthetics of the interiors and the prospects for how the center will be used year-round." The New York Times 08/21/03
Posted: 08/20/2003 11:40 pm
Swimming Alone In A Five-Hour Korean Opera In Edinburgh this summer, you can see a five-hour Korean opera. Maybe it's good. But without some help, how are audiences supposed to figure it out? "How was the audience, unguided, supposed to navigate this terra incognita? It was not surprising that on my visit the Reid Concert Hall was half empty, with at least a dozen leaving at the first pause and more at the interval." The Guardian (UK) 08/21/03
Posted: 08/20/2003 11:36 pm
Opera For The Short Attention Span Is opera too long? Does it require too much attention? "Opera North, based in Leeds, will stage eight one-act operas in four varying double bills next spring as part of its 25th birthday celebrations. The cautious and the initiated alike will be able to buy tickets for either or both shows on any night." The Guardian (UK) 08/21/03
Posted: 08/20/2003 11:32 pm
A Disney Spectacular The hottest ticket in LA this fall is the opening of the Frank Gehry-designed Disney Hall, new home to the LA Philharmonic. "What does this do for the city? I'm quite amused by the fact that the hottest ticket in L.A. is a classical music/architectural event, not some Hollywood thing. I'm going to enjoy that. It won't happen again." The New York Times 08/21/03
Posted: 08/20/2003 9:40 pm
Getting Behind A Chinese Turandot A new documentary by the maker of From Mao To Mozart details the making of an opulent production of "Turandot" in China. "The project was an extravagant collaboration created at the Florence Opera and taken to Beijing a year later in 1997, with a budget of $18-23 million for the Chinese leg alone." Sydney Morning Herald 08/21/03
Posted: 08/20/2003 6:28 pm
Downloaders: What Constitutes "Light" Use? The recording industry says it will only prosecute "light" users of music file-trading services. But what does that mean? "Because the RIAA has refused to quantify what constitutes a 'substantial' amount of file sharing, file sharers are left to wonder whether they are vulnerable to litigation." Wired 08/20/03
Posted: 08/20/2003 5:25 pm
- Previously: Recording Industry: We Won't Pursue Little Guys The recording industry tells a US Congressional committee that it isn't pursuing small-time music downloaders to prosecute them. "RIAA is gathering evidence and preparing lawsuits only against individual computer users who are illegally distributing a substantial amount of copyrighted music." Wired 08/19/03
Copyright Would Be Great If It Paid Creators In theory it's a good idea that those who create something should be entitled to be paid for it. Trouble is, most copyrights aren't owned by the person who created them. So complaining that "artists need to be paid" as a justification for the current copyright laws is... well... Denver Post 08/20/03
Posted: 08/20/2003 4:56 pm
Little To Cheer As Cuts Mount "In this time of exploding budget deficits, economic paralysis, and persistent revenue contractions, 2003 to date has offered very little news on the subject of state and local arts funding to give cause for good cheer. Dozens of states and hundreds of localities have cut arts appropriations - by half, two-thirds, three-quarters, or more. And while it's been a useful time for arts advocates and thousands of not-for-profits to join together in common spirit, the whole definition of victory at the moment is oddly perverse: If cuts are less draconian than first feared, if arts agencies are spared abolition, that's considered a win. Missing in all this, meanwhile, are pro-arts words from elected figures." Backstage 08/18/03
Posted: 08/20/2003 9:04 am
Why Our Theatres Are Empty? "With virtually every one of our companies — big and small — facing a distressing number of empty seats, it make sense to ask why the under-35s aren't more devoted playgoers. I think it comes down to two things: For most of them, conventional theatre costs too much and means too little. It's not that they hate the art form. Far from it. All you have to do is hang out at the Fringe or Summerworks to encounter hundreds of people who wouldn't be caught dead at Stratford, Shaw or CanStage." Toronto Star 08/21/03
Posted: 08/20/2003 11:44 pm
London's West End On Sale "London theatre is succumbing to a frenzy of price-cutting wheezes that don't so much offer customers a healthy, free-market range of bargains as lead to a muddle, which will confuse everyone as to the real cost of a ticket and create resistance to the standard price." The Telegraph (London) 08/20/03
Posted: 08/20/2003 6:36 pm
Rowling For Nobel Laureate? Fans of JK Rowling have started a campaign to get her nominated for a Nobel Prize for Literature. They "yesterday launched a global internet campaign to have the Scottish writer nominated for the prestigious award founded 103 years ago by Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite." Spporters of the idea believe that "in creating Harry Potter, one of the most popular characters in the history of fiction, Ms Rowling has done enough to become a Nobel laureate." The Scotsman 08/20/03
Posted: 08/20/2003 6:22 pm
Chinese Dance - Going Out Into Its Own? "Can China develop its own indigenous ballet? After decades of imitative versions of Swan Lake and Giselle, interspersed with heavy-handed Maoist ideological productions, can China finally modernize its ballet with innovative contemporary works that reflect its own culture?" The Globe & Mail (Canada) 08/21/03
Posted: 08/21/2003 8:54 am | 
