English As The Global Language? Think Again. "With the emergence of the Internet and the growth of global commerce, many assume English is on its way toward becoming the dominant global language, wiping out its competitors as it spreads around the world. Actually, the number of people who speak English exclusively is declining worldwide, while people who speak two or more languages are becoming more common." Arabic and Spanish are on the rise, and Chinese (which, let's not forget, is spoken by three times as many people as its nearest competitor) isn't going away anytime soon. Nonetheless, researchers predict that English will remain the language of international business and commerce for the foreseeable future. Chicago Tribune 04/01/04
Posted: 04/01/2004 6:02 am
The Internet Art Crash The trouble with being an artist on the cutting edge is that when you discover that the trend you're leading has just become a passe fad, it's easy to become very irrelevant very quickly. "Internet art may have little direct connection to the dot-com financial bubble, but its reputation has suffered as the Internet itself has lost cachet. Many who work in the Internet art world report a sense of digital exhaustion." The New York Times 03/31/04
Posted: 04/01/2004 6:52 am
Portrait Of A Troubled Art Collection "As the McMichael Canadian Art Collection prepares to host its second annual '100-per-cent Canadian' fundraiser tonight at Toronto's art-moderne masterpiece the Carlu, the art gallery is poised to undergo big changes in the months ahead." But change is nothing new to the McMichael, which throughout its history has endured seemingly constant and "tumultuous disputes over the gallery's governance and mission. Everyone, it seems, has gotten in on the debates at one time or another -- the McMichaels first and foremost, governments, scholars, artists, art critics, auditors, lawyers, opposition politicians, and the courts." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 04/01/04
Posted: 04/01/2004 6:24 am
Big Plans In Baghdad In the aftermath of the fall of Baghdad, the looting and ransacking of the Iraq Museum was viewed as a very avoidable tragedy indicative of the inability of the occupying forces to protect the country's national treasures. But "ten months after its looting, the Iraq Museum has recovered nearly half of the artifacts stolen. Many of those treasures, like the museum itself, are in need of extensive restoration. And a more ambitious goal has emerged, as well: of returning the museum to a role it has not played in a generation, as a center of scholarship and as a place to display Iraq's priceless archaeological heritage." The New York Times 03/31/04
Posted: 04/01/2004 5:46 am
Envy Not The 9/11 Curator As national tragedies go, the 9/11 terrorist attacks stand out for the visual images left in the minds of everyone who watched the horror unfold, either in person or on television, so the idea of creating a museum to memorialize some of the objects found in the wreckage of the World Trade Center was a natural. But what objects should make the cut? "At the beginning, with memories so fresh and personal and abundant, the most difficult curatorial choices will have to be made. If the museum were to draw on nothing more than the artifacts... that are now stored in Hangar 17 at Kennedy International Airport, it would have to winnow the collection by about 20 percent just to fit in the designated space." The New York Times 03/31/04
Posted: 04/01/2004 5:41 am
Today's Art - What A Peculiar Lot Where is contemporary art going? Martin Gaylord is confused: "Is there a trend in contemporary art? At the moment, it just seems to be getting more and more peculiar. This year's Turner Prize - won, you may recall, by a transvestite potter - might have seemed slightly outre. But, in comparison with the Beck's Futures Prize, currently on show at the ICA, the tame old Turner looks positively mainstream." The Telegraph (UK) 04/01/04
Posted: 03/31/2004 10:33 pm
Rehang This! (What's The Point?) Why do museums think it's a good idea to rehang the art in its collections? "I cannot believe that public understanding of art is increased by the endless shakings-up of displays, to which museums have become addicted. The curators are doing it for themselves: staging convulsions of taste and knowledge that impress their peers. No one nowadays wants to think their job is dull, but looking after a museum collection was, traditionally, one of the staider professions. Not any more. Now everyone is interested in museology, curating is an art form, history is widely recognised as a fiction and new displays have become as integral to public galleries as couture shows to the fashion industry." The Guardian (UK) 04/01/04
Posted: 03/31/2004 10:22 pm
The Ultimate Do-It-Yourself Music Who needs a big expensive piano, really? After all, you can make beautiful music for only a few measley bucks! Just "pry open a Gameboy, tinker with its electronic guts, plug the re-engineered result into a Speak & Spell, duct tape it all together, sprinkle liberally with glitter, hook it up to an amplifier and let the good times roll." The act of creating such self-hacked instruments is known as "circuit bending," and a new festival celebrating the fad may be proof that it's becoming a legitimate form of artistic expression. Wired 04/01/04
Posted: 04/01/2004 5:27 am
You Mean MTV Still Plays Videos In Europe? MTV Europe has backed off efforts to force a cut in the royalty rate it pays to independent record labels. The TV music network, which also owns European music channels VH1 and TMF, had sought a rate cut of 55% from nearly 300 smaller labels, but the companies went public with the dispute, and MTV has apparently backed down. BBC 04/01/04
Posted: 04/01/2004 5:15 am
Debunking The Myth Of Austin Why all the kudos for Austin as a music capital? It peaked about seven years ago, writes Lindsey Eck. These days "cops with dB meters lurk like vultures outside of venues and force people unloading equipment to park blocks away, no matter how heavy the drum kit. Alcohol enforcement is particularly heavy, while the State Comptroller has singled out downtown clubs for closure over unpaid taxes (which must be paid in advance of the club taking in revenues). And let’s not even begin to enumerate the ways in which zoning, industrial policy, and development decisions generally have made Austin an impossible place." Leaves of Oak 03/31/04
Posted: 03/31/2004 9:13 pm
Canadian Judge Rules Downloaders Can Allow Their Music To Be Copied A Canadian judge has ruled that the recording industry can't sue people who allow music they own to be copied by others. The judge ruled that "the Canadian Recording Industry Association hadn't shown copyright infringement by 29 people who had allowed their music files to be uploaded. Making files available in online, shared directories is within the bounds of Canadian copyright law." CBC 03/31/04
Posted: 03/31/2004 7:48 pm
Anne Of The Public Domain A controversial piece of Canadian legislation which would have extended the copyright of certain works of literature - most notably, the Anne of Green Gables series - has apparently died in Parliament, but the story of how it met its demise is as rife with political intrigue as the question of how such a specific measure found its way into legislative print in the first place. The estate of Lucy Maud Montgomery, author of the Green Gables books, had pushed especially hard for passage, and questions are swirling about the political influence of the Montgomery family as a result. The Globe & Mail (Canada) 04/01/04
Posted: 04/01/2004 6:19 am
Lincoln Center Redo To Commence (at least the first part) Finally - an agreement. Now the first phase of Lincoln Center's badly-needed redevelopment can get started. "The first phase of this grand effort is to improve West 65th Street. Now it feels less like a thoroughfare and more like an oversize back alley. A hulking overhang crosses the street, throwing much of it into perpetual shadow, and the walls of Lincoln Center on either side loom large and forbidding. Early redesigns featured bright marquees, a transparent bridge and a wide staircase leading up into Lincoln Center on the south side of the street." The New York Times 04/01/04
Posted: 03/31/2004 10:44 pm
The Audience Problem (Yes, We Mean You!) Audience behavior has got worse and worse in recent years. "Why is this sort of behaviour so common in theatres nowadays? Presumably because we live in a restless channel-flicking culture, where concentration is no longer a virtue. Epidemics of coughing and chatting can, of course, serve as a valid critical response to a tedious spectacle. Yet they are mostly just a manifestation of inattention, laziness, and sheer selfish rudeness. And I'm convinced that people don't switch off their mobile phones because sub-consciously they crave the distraction." The Telegraph (UK) 04/01/04
Posted: 03/31/2004 10:29 pm
$630 Million Brooklyn Project Underway Construction is beginning on the $630 million redevlopment of the area around the Brooklyn Academy of Music. "Called the BAM Cultural District, the idea, on the drawing board since 1998, is only now beginning to take shape. The project is spearheaded by Harvey Lichtenstein, who served as BAM executive director from 1967 to 1999 and who now heads up the BAM Local Development Corporation, in charge of turning the idea of a cultural district into reality." Backstage 03/31/04
Posted: 03/31/2004 10:03 pm
McEwan Delayed At US Border On Way To Speaking Tour Writer Ian McEwan - winner of the prestigious Booker Prize and author of the best-selling "Atonement" - was refused entry into the US and delayed for 24 hours at the start of a speaking tour of the US Tuesday. One of Britain's most popular and acclaimed authors, McEwan "almost missed his appearance before Seattle Arts & Lectures after he was refused entry to the United States by American authorities at the Vancouver, B.C., airport and spent more than 24 hours in enforced limbo." Seattle Post-Intelligencer 04/01/04
Posted: 03/31/2004 9:50 pm
Alistair Cooke - A Creature Of Radio Alistair Cooke much preferred radio to television "because the pictures were better," he often said, quoting the remark of 7-year-old boy that he'd heard of. "You are in charge of the picture," Cooke elaborated. "If you stand up against the Empire State Building on television and tell its history, which is ghoulish and funny, viewers are saying, 'He looks a little tired,' or, 'He's not as thin as he used to be.' Whereas if you tell the story on radio, your words create the picture, and that's what I love. The voice does the whole thing." Straight Up (AJBlogs) 03/31/04
Posted: 03/31/2004 7:55 pm
- Cooke's Enduring Charm "Alistair Cooke’s suave and debonair on-camera persona was not the whole story. He was not English, but American, giving up his British passport in 1941, as bombs rained down during the Blitz. For this act, some in the BBC never forgave him. He loved America passionately, and saw it as an open and optimistic alternative to the grim class-bound world he had left." The Idler 03/31/04
Posted: 03/31/2004 7:26 pm
Taking To The Streets For Gypsy Cast members in the Broadway production of Gypsy are out on the streets around the TKTS booth in Times Square drumming up business for the show. "Most people have no idea what they want to see. So if you give them a reason to come, like 'I'm in the show,' they'll usually come. It is a grass-roots effort that might be working. Since March 10, the cast's first day on the TKTS line, the show has been averaging sales of more than 300 half-price tickets a day. Prior to the campaign the show rarely broke 200 at the booth." The New York Times 04/01/04
Posted: 03/31/2004 10:51 pm
Big Day For Canadian Prizes The Writers' Trust of Canada has awarded this year's prize for political writing to retired Canadian lieutenant-general Roméo Dallaire, for his examination of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, Shake Hands With the Devil. The prize carries a CAN$15,000 cash prize, and is one of the country's most prestigious literary awards. "Elsewhere, the Griffin Trust, sponsor of the world's richest prizes for poetry -- $80,000 -- announced the 2004 nominees," including Canadian poets Leslie Greentree and Anne Simpson. The Globe & Mail (Canada) 04/01/04
Posted: 04/01/2004 6:12 am
Back To The 'Burbs After a period when the suburbs seemed to have disappeared from American novels, they seem to be coming back, reimagined by a new generation of writers. The books "suggest that there are important stories still to be found in the land of the split-level and the McMansion, the land where many pollsters, as it happens, believe the next election will be won or lost. These novels and others like them may even tell us a few things the pollsters cannot. They're also a reminder that the American vision of suburbia has been created by novels and stories at least as much as it has been described by them. The suburbs aren't just a place anymore; they're a state of mind." The New York Times 04/01/04
Posted: 03/31/2004 10:55 pm
The New Movie Checklist: Ticket, Popcorn, Strip Search... Your trip to the local multiplex to check out the big new Hollywood blockbuster may soon include an element you hadn't bargained for: a bag search and pat-down to insure that you aren't carrying any video cameras or camera phones that could be used to illegally record the film for later distribution. In-theater searches aren't exactly a great PR move for the industry, but officials insist that they may be the only way to stem the tide of pirated films. Montreal Gazette 04/01/04
Posted: 04/01/2004 6:36 am
Solutions? No. But We Do Have A Task Force! The U.S. Justice Department has announced that it will form a task force to look into the issue of illegal content piracy (online song-swapping, etc.,) and that the task force will advise the attorney general on how the department should be dealing with the problem. "The announcement took place on the same day that a House judiciary subcommittee unanimously approved a bill that would punish file swappers with up to three years in jail for first offenses, and up to six for repeat offenses." Wired 04/01/04
Posted: 04/01/2004 5:24 am
A Shocker: Australians Say Commercials Would Be Fine On ABC The state-owned Australian Broadcasting Corporation has been doing some polling of its viewers. "The results have been startling. According to the research, the ABC's adoption of commercial advertising would receive majority support from viewers. One December 2003 focus poll showed that 72 per cent of viewers approve of introducing advertising to the ABC. Of that percentage, 54 per cent stated a strong preference for the ABC to take greater responsibility for generating its own funding." The Age (Melbourne) 04/01/04
Posted: 03/31/2004 9:57 pm
After f/X - The Movies Held Hostage What's wrong with movies today? They've been kidnapped by special effects, writes Denis Dutton. "Producers are stuck in the upward spiral of an endless special-effects arms race, with demands for bigger explosions, uglier villains, more frenzied, realistic violence, louder noises and ever-expanding battle scenes. A computer-generated crowd, according to the Hollywood rule, must not be smaller than the crowds in last month's releases." So what about plot? Character? Acting, anyone? New Zealand Herald 03/31/04
Posted: 03/31/2004 9:05 pm
