The Law That Could Kill New Ideas "The Senate Judiciary Committee will consider a bill Thursday that would hold technology companies liable for any product they make that encourages people to steal copyright materials. Critics say the bill would effectively outlaw peer-to-peer networks and prohibit the development of new technologies, including devices like the iPod." Wired 07/22/04
Posted: 07/22/2004 6:53 am
Is It Art? Or Is It A Copy? (Is There A Difference?) "Scanners, computer-aided design software and automated milling devices are assisting sculptors and in some cases replacing them, creating detailed pieces from slabs of marble and reverse-engineering complex forms. The result is the seemingly oxymoronic concept of mass customization, in which infinite copies of infinite variations are possible as long as there is stone to quarry. But the harnessing of these granite-grinding Xerox machines, able to duplicate just about any sculpture, may also blur the line between what is authentic and what is not. Is such a sculpture art, or merely a computer-aided copy?" The New York Times 07/22/04
Posted: 07/21/2004 10:36 pm
Group Art... Really? "Just how inventive can an anonymous group of people be? Could an online mob produce a poem, a novel, or a painting? We like to believe that the blue bolt of artistic inspiration strikes only the individual. '[The] group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man,' John Steinbeck wrote in East of Eden. Hollywood scriptwriters constantly moan over how their brilliant ideas were mutilated by studio 'editing by committee'. But collaboration has a long history in art. Slate 07/21/04
Posted: 07/21/2004 4:59 pm
Art Tax Scores A Bundle (Of Art) A UK program that allows people to pay inheritance taxes in art rather than cash has netted the government art "worth more than £21 million, including paintings by Constable and Turner. BBC 07/22/04
Posted: 07/21/2004 11:36 pm
Vandals Attack More Outdoor Italian Art "In the latest in a string of attacks on outdoor artworks in Italy, vandals have smashed a stone bee that adorns a centuries-old fountain by Renaissance master Gian Lorenzo Bernini in central Rome. The attack late on Monday night followed similar assaults in Rome and Venice in which vandals have used hammers and stones to chip away at priceless works of art." Sydney Morning Herald (Reuters) 07/22/04
Posted: 07/21/2004 11:33 pm
Post-Fire - Rebuilding Hell Among the millions of dollars worth of artwork destroyed in Saatchi fire was the Chapman brothers' Hell, considered their best work. It consists of 10,000 plastic figures and took two years to make. Now the brothers have decided to rebuild. "We're going to make a second version, a more extensive, updated `Hell.' There are a lot of things that didn't go into the first `Hell.' This has given us a second opportunity to revisit it.' Much has changed since 1998, when they began working on Hell. 'At the time we had just lost our gallery and were unemployed. We had time on our hands'." The New York Times 07/22/04
Posted: 07/21/2004 10:03 pm
WTC Dispute Heats Up "Architect Daniel Libeskind held out 'approval' on the Freedom Tower design in an attempted $800,000 shakedown, twin towers leaseholder Larry Silverstein charged in court papers yesterday." The two are at odds over the designs and Libeskind's participation. New York Daily News 07/21/04
Posted: 07/21/2004 4:43 pm
Big Bucks In Piracy Pirated music is now a $4.5 billion industry each year says the International Federation of Phonographic Industries. "It is estimated 35% of all CDs sold in the world are pirate copies." BBC 07/22/04
Posted: 07/22/2004 5:58 am
Cincinnati Symphony In Major Cost-Cutting "Three consecutive years of operating at a deficit will require the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra to look at major cost-cutting despite a $1.8 million gift from an anonymous donor that will erase the deficits for the 2003 and 2004 fiscal years." Ohio News Network (AP) 07/22/04
Posted: 07/21/2004 10:25 pm
EU Gives Consent For Sony/BMG Merger The European Union has given its assent to a merger of music giants BMG and Sony. "The tie-up of the Japanese firm with the music arm of German media group Bertelsmann reduces the number of music majors from five to four." The deal renews speculation that other mergers might be in the works. "EMI has twice failed to merge with Warner Music over the past four years." The Guardian (UK) 07/21/04
Posted: 07/21/2004 5:40 pm
Moscow Conservatory Great Hall Is Falling Down The famed Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory is crumbling. "With increased usage, a fundamental problem has been aggravated: underground rivers have weakened the foundations of the building, and they have cracked. A few months ago, the conservatory had to close some of the Great Hall's balconies, as there was a danger of sections collapsing into the orchestra. Then there are the water pipes and electrical wiring..." The Guardian (UK) 07/21/04
Posted: 07/21/2004 5:32 pm
Maybe A Fix For Piracy? Maybe one way to cut down on CD piracy would be charging less for CDs with heavy copy-protection. CDs that can be copied or that play on more devices would cost more... BBC 07/21/04
Posted: 07/21/2004 4:38 pm
Artists (In Record Numbers) Against Bush "Not since the height of the Vietnam War have so many actors, writers, artists, and musicians mobilized politically during an election year -- the vast majority of them against Bush. It's not just the usual liberal Hollywoodites, either, like Goldberg, Susan Sarandon, and Rob Reiner. Artists of every type are speaking out, from the hip-hoppers involved in impresario Russell Simmons' nonpartisan voter-registration drive to literary lions such as novelists Joyce Carol Oates and Jonathan Franzen to respected visual artists such as Matthew Barney and Cecily Brown." BusinessWeek 07/21/04
Posted: 07/21/2004 6:46 pm
Beneath The Medici Tombs (More Bodies) Begun last month, the Medici project "aims to exhume 49 bodies of the Medici family and reconstruct the dynasty's genetic make-up and their real family tree." Explorers of one Medici burial site have discovered a secret crypt that contains the bodies of seven children and one adult. "Though the tombs had been seriously damaged by the flood of 1966, the remains of a nine-year-old boy are still in good condition. Expertly embalmed, he wears red clothes and a small crown. We could have found the illegitimate children of Grand Duke Cosimo I." Discovery 07/21/04
Posted: 07/21/2004 5:18 pm
Advising Singers To Sing (Not Talk Politics) Joe Fusilli thinks Linda Ronstadt should stick to singing rather than politics. "It's too early to tell whether this controversy will re-energize Ms. Ronstadt's career. But after seeing about a thousand rock concerts, my feeling is that rock stars who discuss politics from the stage deserve whatever criticism they get--not for speaking their minds, but for assuming they might have something to say that we need to hear from them. I figure if you're a pop musician and you feel the need to express your politics, go try to write the next Blowin' in the Wind." OpinionJournal.com 07/21/04
Posted: 07/21/2004 6:31 pm
Pumping Up Stratford And Shaw Ontario's Shaw and Stratford Festivals have been hit hard by a decline in tourism in the past two years, what with SARS and a surging Canadian dollar. So the Ontario government is stepping in to help, with hundreds of thousands of dollars in promotional assistance. The Globe & Mail (Canada) 07/22/04
Posted: 07/22/2004 6:39 am
The Cole Porter Effect Though he's been dead for 40 years, Cole Porter has continued to have a huge influemce on music. "In a sense, Porter has never been away, though his reputation rests mainly on songs he wrote between the late 1920s and late 1940s, and he died in 1964 at age 73. He's remained an icon in cabaret music and gay culture by virtue of both his music and his glamorous, if contradictory, lifestyle." Chicago Tribune 07/22/04
Posted: 07/22/2004 6:19 am
Does The RSC Really Need London? The Royal Shakespeare Company has been looking for a London Home. "But why does the RSC need a London base? Partly because it is the will of the Arts Council that the company has "a regular and sustained presence in the capital", and partly because the management finds it difficult to persuade agents to sign their actors up for a Stratford season unless a London transfer is part of the deal. These are not altogether cogent reasons." The Telegraph (UK) 07/21/04
Posted: 07/21/2004 6:05 pm
Vietnam's Bad Hair Day Vietnam has passed an edict banning wild haircuts on stage. "Regulation 47 bans 'hairstyles which inflict horror, painted or dyed hair, shaved heads or long, uncombed hair' The ban, announced by the ministry of culture last week, also tackles 'revealing performance outfits'." BBC 07/21/04
Posted: 07/21/2004 4:33 pm
Books, Books, Books! Everywhere! (Too Many?) A new study says America is reading less. But the number of books being published is soaring. "In a market where people are reading less, not more, there are 20 books published every hour in the day, every day. Why the outpouring of books? For some reason, everybody thinks they can write a book, and book publishing seems glamorous to them. But there's no way the market can absorb all those books." Chicago Sun-Times 07/22/04
Posted: 07/22/2004 6:11 am
The Robot Librarian "A group of robotics researchers at University Jaume I in Spain is working on a robot librarian which could deliver the promise of a helpful bot. The prototype has cameras, sensors and grippers so it can locate and collect a book. The hope is that one day teams of service robots could work in libraries." BBC 07/21/04
Posted: 07/21/2004 4:54 pm
