Feeling Poorly? Then Play! Is the way to better health found in playing games? "Dozens of games have been developed in recent years to train physicians, educate patients, improve fitness and help treat the addicted and the mentally ill. Dozens more are on the way." Wired 09/15/04
Posted: 09/15/2004 10:06 am
Been There, Deja That French for "already seen", déjà vu is "the sort of fleeting, intimate experience that reveals itself more readily to novelists than to researchers. As recently as the 1990's, social scientists doing population surveys asked about it in the same breath as they inquired about poltergeists and contact with the dead. But new research on memory has opened a promising window on the phenomenon, providing both possible explanations for the sensation and novel ways to create and measure it." The New York Times 09/14/04
Posted: 09/14/2004 7:41 pm
The Vanishing Intellectual "We inherit the idea of the intellectual from the 18th-century Enlightenment, which valued truth, universality and objectivity - all highly suspect notions in a postmodern age. As Furedi points out, these ideas used to be savaged by the political right, as they undercut appeals to prejudice, hierarchy and custom. Nowadays, in a choice historical irony, they are under assault from the cultural left." New Statesman 09/13/04
Posted: 09/14/2004 7:22 pm
A Detour Of History Sociologist Michael Mann has spent a career writing an acclaimed series of books on the history of power. Things were going fine, but then he got to the 20th Century, and it all got so complicated... Chronicle of Higher Education 09/13/04
Posted: 09/14/2004 7:04 pm
Seattle's Big New Sculpture Park The Seattle Art Museum announces art for its ambitious new $85 million sculpture park. Works by Calder and Serra will anchor the park, on the shores of Puget Sound. The park is scheduled to open in 2006, after several years of delay. Seattle Post-Intelligencer 09/15/04
Posted: 09/15/2004 10:18 am
DC's National Mall: No Vacancy "Is there any space left on the Mall? With the opening of the National Museum of the American Indian Sept. 21, the officials in charge of Washington's main savanna have hoisted a "No Vacancy" sign." Washington Post 09/15/04
Posted: 09/15/2004 10:12 am
The One And Only? (What A Concept!) "Ever since Impressionism, we tend to associate a unique visual style with an authentic expression of some inner feeling of the soul of the artist. Then if he does it over again, you think, 'Wait, how authentic was this?' Certainly, many artistic masterpieces are singular, but the ideal of the unique, individual work of art is fairly new -- it emerged 200 or so years ago as part of the artistic movement known as Romanticism." Chicago Tribune 09/15/04
Posted: 09/15/2004 7:04 am
The Met's New President "For the first time, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has chosen a woman as president: Emily Kernan Rafferty, the Met's current senior vice president for external affairs. Ms. Rafferty will succeed David E. McKinney when he retires in January." The New York Times 09/15/04
Posted: 09/14/2004 10:30 pm
Venice: Taking Architecture's Temperature The Venice Architecture Biennale take the temperature olf contemporary architecture. "Where the Victorians tried to cope with the unnerving urban explosion of the Industrial Revolution with architecture that appeared four-square, authoritative and inevitable, modern architects, or at least those highlighted at the biennale, seem to think that the way to respond to the equally unstable post-industrialised world is to create buildings that appear as if they too are in a state of constant change. This, of course, is a fallacy." The Telegraph (UK) 09/15/04
Posted: 09/14/2004 9:40 pm
Picasso's "Secret" Painting "A 'secret' painting by the young Pablo Picasso was unveiled at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao yesterday after experts found it hidden beneath layers of paint on another of his canvasses. The 104-year-old painting was yesterday hailed as Picasso's first Paris picture, painted during a visit in 1900 when he was 19." The Guardian (UK) 09/15/04
Posted: 09/14/2004 8:55 pm
NY Art World As Super Paradigm "Nowadays, different art worlds work differently. Glasgow, Leipzig, and Los Angeles are laboratories run by skeleton crews. London is the same, only crossed with a private club, a sparkler, and a sideshow. The New York art world has swallowed up all these paradigms and mutated into a kind of nebulous Super Paradigm. Think of it as a giant sponge: Bland on the outside, intricate within, it is extremely porous and permeable, takes advantage of any current, absorbs everything, and is capable of enormous engorgement. The Super Paradigm may be pluralism gone wild, or a giant oil spill—sprawling but not evolving. Whatever, there's no avant-garde within it because there's nothing to react against." Village Voice 09/14/04
Posted: 09/14/2004 7:55 pm
Philadelphia Orchestra Contract - More Than Money The Philadelphia Orchestra and its musicians are locked in new contract talks, and of course money is an issue. "But on another level, more enduring than money, these talks and other forces at play seek a change in orchestra culture that would alter how musicians view themselves as employees. For the music-listening public, and the extent to which the orchestra is perceived as a responsible cultural citizen, the results could be profound." Philadelphia Inquirer 09/15/04
Posted: 09/15/2004 10:29 am
High-Level Churn At The Baltimore Symphony Yuri Temirkanov's departure from the Baltimore Symphony is only the latest leaving by senior leadership. "When some of the most seasoned and effective employees left, the blithe word from on high was, 'No one is irreplaceable.' Management expressed no concern for the drain in institutional memory or community and patron connections that those resignations signified. Losing Temirkanov, whose guidance has generated a higher technical level and remarkably communicative spirit within the orchestra, may likewise be shrugged off as an inevitable, not-to-worry development. But only those who have never truly recognized what this conductor had to offer could be feeling blase today." Baltimore Sun 09/14/04
Posted: 09/14/2004 10:21 pm
The Endangered Instruments UK youth orchestras have a record number of auditionees. But there's a big shortage of players for some instruments - the bassoon, oboe, double bass, viola, harp, trombone and tuba. Youth Music have recently called these instruments “endangered species” The Scotsman 09/15/04
Posted: 09/14/2004 10:14 pm
Taking The Artistic Temperature Of 9/11 More and more artists are making art about difficult events of the past few years. "In the week of the third anniversary of 9/11, it's worth asking how they're doing. For, ever so slowly, writers, film-makers and dramatists have begun to address the twin events that have dominated the start of the 21st century: the attacks on New York and Washington and the subsequent Iraq war." The Guardian (UK) 09/15/04
Posted: 09/14/2004 9:19 pm
New Ideas For UK Arts Funding? Sir Christopher Frayling has some new ideas as he takes over as chairman of the British Arts Council. "Eighty per cent of the cash we give out goes to regularly funded organisations and a quarter of these take almost 90 per cent of the grants. Many of them have been on our books since 1947, and are receiving money in the same proportion. Too many people see the Arts Council as a cashpoint machine with a complicated pin number. We have got to be more than that. A lot of the most interesting developments in the arts are inter- disciplinary. So we could be looking at new categories for funding". Financial Times 09/14/04
Posted: 09/14/2004 8:15 pm
Wrong Way For The Abbey Dublin's Abbey Theatre has dug itself a deep hole. "The theatre, which produced playwrights from Sean O'Casey to Brian Friel, has seen the centenary of its foundation by WB Yeats marred by the disastrous box office of its anniversary programme, a deficit of almost €2.5m (£1.7m), a sudden plan to axe a third of its staff, and a decaying building that is a health hazard. A bitter email by its artistic director, Ben Barnes, has stoked tensions." The Guardian (UK) 09/15/04
Posted: 09/14/2004 8:59 pm
- Blame Game - Abbey Director Apologizes Ben Barnes, artistic director of Dublin's troubled Abbey Theatre, has found himself in yet another emergency meeting, this time over an e-mail he sent to international colleagues, distancing himself from his theater's difficulties. But, having apologized for and retracted the criticisms he made of the theater's board in the e-mail, he remains in his job. Ireland Online 09/13/04
Posted: 09/14/2004 8:54 pm
The RSC's Fine New Life The turnaround of the Royal Shakespeare Company in the past year has been amazing. Artistic director Michael Boyd was visibly jubilant at the company's most successful Stratford season in 10 years, the slashing of the crippling deficit he inherited - and above all confounding the advisers who warned him Middle England would stay away from his current season of 17th century Spanish plays: "I'm glad my optimism about human nature has been rewarded." The Guardian (UK) 09/15/04
Posted: 09/14/2004 8:52 pm
The Compleat Shakespeare (First Time) For the first time, the complete works of William Shakespeare are to be perfomed in a single season. "As well as his well-known plays, the Complete Works of Shakespeare Festival will feature his entire collection of sonnets, poems and other works. The seven-month festival will begin in April 2006, with performances at Royal Shakespeare Company theatres and other venues in Stratford-upon-Avon. Visiting theatre companies from across the globe will also take part." BBC 0914/04
Posted: 09/14/2004 6:34 pm
How Peanuts Saved A Comics Classic Seattle comics publisher Fantagraphics has always had a lot of critical respect. But its finances were perilous. Indeed, its survival was just about a constant question. But then it "nailed down the multiyear rights to reprint, in its entirety and in chronological order, another newspaper classic: Charles M. Schulz's Peanuts. It's a blockbuster deal that guarantees Fantagraphics will actually be around for another 12 years. Until this spring, no one at the company was certain if it would be around another 12 weeks." Seattle Weekly 09/15/04
Posted: 09/15/2004 10:35 am
The Radical Librarians US librarians are getting radical in their fight against the USA Patriot Act. "What got many librarians' dander up was Section 215 of the law, which stipulates that government prosecutors and FBI agents can seek permission from a secret court created under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to access personal records -- everything from medical histories to reading habits. They don't need a subpoena. In fact, they don't need to show that a crime has even been committed. And librarians, stymied by a gag order, are forbidden to tell anyone (except a lawyer)." Wired 09/15/04
Posted: 09/15/2004 10:03 am
Blume To Get National Book Award Children's book writer Judy Blume known for candid tales such as "Deenie" and "Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret," has been named this year's winner of an honorary National Book Award for contributions to American letters. Yahoo! (AP) 09/14/04
Posted: 09/14/2004 7:31 pm
Cleveland's Dance Hotbed A host of small new dance companies has sprouted in Cleveland. It's a great development for fans of dance. But others wonder: is there enough of an audience to support the new activity? The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 09/15/04
Posted: 09/15/2004 10:24 am
