Keep It Simple "There is too much needless complexity in the world. Technology, which was supposed to make our lives easier, has taken a wrong turn. In 20 years we've gone from the simplicity of MacPaint to Photoshop. While the first fostered a creative explosion, the second gave birth to an industry of how-to books and classes. And such complexity is commonplace. Despite the lip service paid to "ease of use," "plug and play," and "one-click shopping," simplicity is an endangered quality in the digital world, and it is time to break free from technology's intimidating complexity." The New York Times 05/20/04
Posted: 05/20/2004 4:04 pm
Does Education = Upward Mobility? (Maybe Not) There is a widely-held assumption that "wider, more universal education will act as a leveller of social opportunities. The assumption has thus far proved wrong. Comprehensive education, which should be considered a success on many other grounds, did not dent relative social immobility. Better-off kids still did better, either within the comprehensives or in the private sector." New Statesman 05/24/04
Posted: 05/20/2004 3:56 pm
SF Jewish, Mexican Museums Endangered In San Francisco, "the proposed Jewish and Mexican museums, once seen as ideal ways to embody San Francisco's racial and ethnic mosaic, are in such financial trouble that City Hall and museum backers worry they may never get built." San Francisco Chronicle 05/21/04
Posted: 05/21/2004 6:37 am
Raphael Drawing Discovered A Raphael previously unknown drawing by Raphael has been discovered amidst a bundle of other drawings brought to Sotheby's in London for valuation. "It had apparently spent most of the 20th century tucked in a cardboard folder with the other drawings in a drawer in a private house in London. The sketch is now believed to date from 1505, and to be Raphael's first known drawing in red chalk, made soon after he arrived in Florence and fell under the influence of Leonardo da Vinci." The Guardian (UK) 05/21/04
Posted: 05/21/2004 5:41 am
Is The Tide Turning Against Conceptual Art? "In the last decade or so, Conceptual Art - represented by the Young British Artists - has won all the prizes, especially the Turner Prize, and occupied the commanding heights of the British art world, for example the various Tate Galleries, and grabbed all the media attention. Meanwhile the Campaign for Real Painting is in retreat, overshadowed, pushed out and buried by an art establishment who believe that the practice of painting the human figure, by hand, in oils, from life or from imagination, is thoroughly old hat and beneath consideration. And now the whole world is filled with installations, video-projections, ready-made objects, dead animals, manipulated photos and obscene model-making. But is the tide about to turn?" The Independent (UK) 05/20/04
Posted: 05/20/2004 6:17 pm
Seattle Library - Building As Art Seattle's new Rem Koolhaas-designed central library is winning raves from the critics. "High-end architecture is often a monument to the architect. Rarely is it art. This library is rooted in its functions, blooms where it's planted, is art in itself and is going to be a huge hit with the mass audience that is its principal customer." Seattle Post-Intelligencer 05/20/04
Posted: 05/20/2004 5:32 pm
- The Koolhaas Factor Architect Rem Koolhaas was a longshot to design the Seattle Public Library. He almost didn't enter the competition to design it, almost didn't win the competition. "The new Central Library is an instant landmark for Seattle, a 21st century global architecture icon and a testament to this city's futurist impulses. But for the 59-year-old architect who designed it, the new Central Library may represent even more: a major force in redemption of his reputation." Seattle Post-Intelligencer 05/20/04
Posted: 05/20/2004 5:27 pm
Art: A Great Place To Park Your Money (Conspicuously) Everyone is talking about the hot art market that has seen record prices for contemporary art. "So what gives? The declining dollar and inflation fears certainly make art a decent, demand-driven place for the rich to park their money. In these faux gilded times, the wealthy use art as a Veblenite way to advertise their fortunes -- witness gaudy spreads on the Dallas scene in the current Art + Auction and on Los Angeles collectors in the new Art Review and the New York Times. There’s nothing like showing off that boob job or eye tuck in front of a Frank Stella or Cindy Sherman." Artnet.com 05/20/04
Posted: 05/20/2004 4:50 pm
Breaking Up One Of The World's Great Museums "Now almost forgotten, the Musée Napoléon briefly contained almost all the works of art then most praised and valued by European connoisseurs at the turn of the 19th Century. All this loot had been removed from its owners by right of conquest. ‘The fate of products of genius,’ as an official declaration on the subject put it, ‘is to belong to the people who shine successively on earth by arms and by wisdom, and to follow always the wagons of the victors.’ Furthermore, obviously, Paris — being the most advanced spot on the globe — was the natural home of the world’s finest works of art." Then, in 1815, the Musée was broken up and its treasures dispersed... The Spectator 05/20/04
Posted: 05/20/2004 4:19 pm
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One Ringy Dingy Hate the sound of cell phones ringing? Music producers don't. For them, ring tones are a huge and growing business. "In 2004, your average record company executive is more likely to stifle a cheer every time he hears a tinny version of a chart hit bleeping from a nearby Nokia. According to some sources, the mobile phone ringtone has come to save the music industry. Last year, mobile phone users spent $3 billion on them. They account for 10% of the world's music market." The Guardian (UK) 05/21/04
Posted: 05/21/2004 5:53 am
Milwaukee Symphony Cuts Budget And Staff The Milwuakee Symphony is cutting "more than $2 million off its $17 million operating budget" and laying off 17 employees in an attempt to balance its budget. Additional cost reductions will come from other areas of the organization over three years. The layoffs come as the MSO stops the practice of dipping into its unrestricted endowment fund for operating cash." Milwaukee Business Journal 05/20/04
Posted: 05/21/2004 5:21 am
Where's That Philly Sound? Is the Philadelphia Orchestra slipping a few steps? "With a new performance space, and a European tour imminent under a new director, all seems rosy enough superficially. But there have recently been mutterings in the press about strife beneath the surface, including difficult contract negotiations for the players and arguments about poor acoustics at the Kimmel Centre. But then in Philadelphia, there is a sense, more than other places I've been, that the orchestra is a potent symbol, an ambassador of the city, and everyone you meet has an opinion about it." The Telegraph (UK) 05/18/04
Posted: 05/20/2004 6:45 pm
Opera Australia Funding Crippling Company's Activities Opera Australia posts its second annual deficit. The company's chief executive says Victorians were "not getting the opera they deserved. He said the company could not afford to service Melbourne as it would like unless the Victorian Government increased its contribution. 'The funding level of the company is too little to do all the activities that are asked of the company and the cost of staging opera in Melbourne had been seriously underestimated when the formula was drawn up in 2000. As a result, Victorians were now seeing fewer productions." The Age (Melbourne) 05/20/04
Posted: 05/20/2004 6:40 pm
Milwaukee Symphony - Good And Bad News The Milwaukee Symphony picks up an influential new chairman for its board. The orchestra has also extended music director Andreas Delfs' contract by three years. "These positive developments come at a low point in the MSO's fortunes. Attendance has fallen for several seasons, the value of the endowment has slipped to $28 million from a high of over $40 million in 2000, and contributed income has been soft since the economic downturn in 1999. As of March 31, the symphony's debt stood at $7.1 million, with a credit ceiling of $9 million. That debt includes a projected $3 million shortfall for operations during the current season." Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel 05/20/04
Posted: 05/20/2004 4:41 pm
Electronic Sheet Music The MusicPad Pro Plus is a five-pound tablet computer that displays music scores. "The $1,200 device, with a 12-inch liquid-crystal-display touchscreen, is the first of a class of computers that enable musicians to store music and edit it onscreen. Soon it will also allow them to communicate with one another over wireless networks. In much the way that portable digital audio players have changed the way people consume tunes, tablets like the MusicPad are changing the way musicians use sheet music, which is so compact that it can be digitally stockpiled far more cost-effectively than MP3 audio files." The New York Times 05/20/04
Posted: 05/20/2004 4:36 pm
Growing Hearing Loss In Performers Audiologists are "seeing a growing number of musicians, singers, and even audience members who report ringing or buzzing in their ears -- called 'tinnitus' -- and duller hearing following a theatre performance, rock concert, or movie, with its blasting previews of upcoming features." Backstage 05/20/04
Posted: 05/20/2004 6:21 pm
Theatre Up In Italy But Not Audiences The number of theatre offerings in Italy increased by 10 percent in 2001. But audiences didn't increase to keep up. In 2001, 26 percent of the country's residents attended the theatre. AGI Online 05/20/04
Posted: 05/20/2004 4:08 pm
Library As New Urban Star "The number of visits made to libraries nationwide more than doubled between 1990 and 2001, according to the most recent data available from the American Library Association. Sixty-two percent of adult Americans surveyed in that 2002 study said they had a library card, and they visited libraries an average of 13 times per year. Part of the draw results from the depressed economy. "Instead of paying $24.95 for a best seller, they say, 'I think I'll get it from the library.' But a bigger increase, some analysts believe, comes from libraries' nimbleness in adopting new technologies. Rather than becoming obsolete in the Internet age, they have expanded their role." Seattle Post-Intelligencer 05/20/04
Posted: 05/20/2004 5:22 pm
Today's Teachers - Making Illiteracy Look Good "Today's educational establishment is making actual illiteracy look good, like an act of humanity and rebellion. Writing, which ought to nurture and give shape to thought, is instead being used to pound it into a powder and then reconstitute it into gruel. The thoroughly modern grade-A public-school prose style is not creative or interesting enough even to be wrong. The people who create and enforce the templates are, not to put too fine a point on it, people without understanding or imagination, lobotomized weasels for whom any effort of thought exceeds their strength." Los Angeles Times 05/20/04
Posted: 05/20/2004 5:10 pm
Conan Doyle Papers Sold "A trove of Arthur Conan Doyle's letters, papers and manuscripts, which gathered dust for more than 25 years in a lawyer's office while its future was debated, was sold on Wednesday for $1.7 million, according to Christie's, which handled the sale. Numerous items were bought by Bernard Quaritch, a specialist bookseller in London who may have been acting on behalf of unidentified clients." The New York Times 05/20/04
Posted: 05/20/2004 4:12 pm
Where Are The Great New French Books And Films "Where, it has been wondered — even before the coming together of the Coalition of the Willing — are the great French film directors and novelists of today? Where, in particular, given France's reputation as the world headquarters of sexy romance, not to say plain old sex, are the great French erotic novels and films? Such questions have been reawakened recently by two events." The New York Times 05/21/04
Posted: 05/21/2004 6:48 am
Mamet: Movie Development Is Nonsense David Mamet hits out at the development process in Hollywood, where supposedly movie projects are whipped into shape. "The young, warped by an educational system selling them perpetual adolescence, mistake the battleground for the struggle: they believe that make-work in that one-time area of strife and creation, Hollywood, somehow conveys to them the status of actually working in the Movie Business. It is as if a picnicker at the Gettysburg Memorial Park considered himself a soldier. Just as the Scholastic Aptitude Test measures the ability of the applicant to take that test, the bureaucratic rigours of the 'development' process probe the neophytes' threshold for boredom, repetition, and nonsense." The Guardian (UK) 05/21/04
Posted: 05/21/2004 5:48 am
The Decline Of The BBC Norman Lebrecht doesn't think much of the modern BBC. "Do not mistake the BBC for what was once the British Broadcasting Corporation. It has become an uncontrollable conglomerate whose activities extend from urban regeneration to webcasting in America. These enterprises were never envisaged in its limited public licence. The BBC is an organisation that has lost its sense of direction, stumbling hopefully into virtual incoherence." La Scena Musicale 05/18/04
Posted: 05/20/2004 6:48 pm
TV Networks Drop Reruns "As they try to stave off fierce cable competition and chase the young adults prized by advertisers, networks are loading up on high-concept reality shows and rejiggering lineups at the last minute. As a result, they're using reruns more sparingly than ever or, in many cases, banishing them entirely. Admittedly, this is one funeral that might not attract many mourners." Los Angeles Times 05/20/04
Posted: 05/20/2004 5:06 pm
The Hot Latin Cinema Where's the juice in today's cinema? "You have today in Latin America a generation of directors and actors who grew up after the redemocratization of the continent. That makes a dramatic difference. They are not only talented but socially and politically conscious, and this combination is nurturing a different kind of cinema. The films have a desire for new stories, often stories of identity. We are a young continent, and the countries are in movement, in the process of defining ourselves, and this process creates extraordinary cinematic possibilities." The New York Times 05/20/04
Posted: 05/20/2004 4:58 pm
Channel Surfing (But Only The Ones You Buy) Should TV customers be allowed to buy only the channels they want from their cable and satellite companies? That's what Congress wants to know. TV execs say it's not a good idea - that popular channels subsidize less popular channels. Washington Post 05/20/04
Posted: 05/20/2004 4:28 pm
