Do-It-Yourself Everything "Neil Gershenfeld, a physicist and computer scientist who runs the Center for Bits and Atoms at MIT, envisions a time when many of us will have a "fabrication center" in our homes. We'll be able to download a description of, say, a toaster -- perhaps one we designed ourselves -- to our computers, and then feed the designs and the raw materials into a personal fabricator. At the push of a button, almost like hitting "print," the machine will spit it out." Boston Globe 01/30/05
Posted: 01/31/2005 12:17 am
Is Architecture A Red Herring In The Ground Zero Debate? The struggle to rebuild Ground Zero has frequently been portrayed as a clash between a visionary architect and a powerful New York developer, but "Philip Nobel argues that our obsession with the architect-as-healer has led us to ignore more important, if less emotionally appealing, questions about ground zero: How should the site be used? How much focus should there be on office space, on cultural space, on a memorial? In giving aesthetic speculations more weight than material concerns in our critical and public discussions, he says, we have virtually guaranteed that the site will end up looking like every other New York real estate development." The New York Times 01/30/05
Posted: 01/30/2005 8:47 am
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Joseph Beuys - the Art Of Meaning Joseph Beuys was the greatest German artist of the 30th Century, writes Jonathan Jones. "Beuys was very articulate - almost too articulate - about the meanings of his performances, sculptures, installations and drawings. He was a charismatic man, dressed always the same, in his felt hat and hunter's or angler's waistcoat. And he said his art was about the rediscovery of Eurasian origins, the translation and storage of essential energies, the spiritual properties of fat... he spoke to a dead hare, he lived in a cage with a coyote. On the face of it, he was a prophet of the New Age, and his art, on that reckoning, ought to be gobbledegook." The Guardian (UK) 01/29/05
Posted: 01/30/2005 11:03 pm
Free Marketeer - Saatchi Clears His Closets Collector Charles Saatchi has been selling off his BritArt stable and declared painting king once again. Really? "Does Saatchi really believe the claim publicity material makes - that painting continues to be 'the most relevant and vital way that an artist can communicate' in an age of video, photography and so forth? In which case, it would seem odd to inaugurate his triumphant year of painting with works made so long ago as to be anything but present in tense. Or is he just taking advantage of the current economic revival to make good in the secondary art market?" The Observer (UK) 01/30/05
Posted: 01/30/2005 10:36 pm
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China's First Summer Festival China is creating its first international summer music festival this July. "The festival, similar to the famous Tanglewood and Aspen music schools of the United States, will be the first large-scale annualinternational professional music summer camp ever held in China orSoutheast Asia." China Daily 01/31/05
Posted: 01/30/2005 10:33 pm
I Beethoven, Rock Star There' a big slug of Beethoven showing up on programs around America this year. "An overabundance of Beethoven, or any composer, during an anniversary year is hardly noteworthy. But with no birth or death commemoration of Beethoven in the offing, why so much Beethoven now?" The New York Times 01/30/05
Posted: 01/30/2005 10:32 pm
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Strathmore - Suburban Culture, Urban Ambition The new Strathmore Music Center in a Maryland suburb of Washington DC is an ambitious undertaking for a suburb. Benjamin Forgey writes that "the $100 million center is a traditional urban institution in a fast-changing suburban setting. It'll contribute most significantly to the cultural life of its home county, of course, but, with the Baltimore Symphony treating it as a 'second home,' it'll add choices for many music lovers in the metropolitan area. The architecture itself will be an attraction, eventually. In an age of prominent, in-your-face, innovative civic architecture, the center is a deceptive exception." Washington Post 01/30/05
Posted: 01/30/2005 10:40 pm
The Anti-Gay Agenda Protests over SpongeBob, complaints over gay being shown on a PBS cartoon, books that even mention homosexuality being taken off library shelves in Mississippi. What's going on? "If you are a recently re-elected president with a strong conservative Christian base, and some elements of that base are throwing hissy fits over a sponge and a bunny or what's on a university library shelf, it takes unwanted attention away from larger, more politically challenging matters relating to same-sex marriage bans, or free-marketing Social Security, or strengthening the anti-abortion movement -- a movement that, as President Bush vowed on Jan. 24, 'will not fail.' The culture wars aren't won on the battlefield. They're won by playing a good shell game." Chicago Tribune 01/30/05
Posted: 01/30/2005 10:35 pm
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Philip Johnson And Fascism Philip Johnson's fascist past was mentioned only in passing in most of his obituaries last week. But "Philip Johnson did not just flirt with fascism. He spent several years in his late 20's and early 30's - years when an artist's imagination usually begins to jell - consumed by fascist ideology. He tried to start a fascist party in the United States. He worked for Huey Long and Father Coughlin, writing essays on their behalf. He tried to buy the magazine American Mercury, then complained in a letter, 'The Jews bought the magazine and are ruining it, naturally.' He traveled several times to Germany. He thrilled to the Nuremberg rally of 1938 and, after the invasion of Poland, he visited the front at the invitation of the Nazis. He approved of what he saw." The New York Times 01/31/05
Posted: 01/31/2005 8:05 am
Argento Of The Prairies American composer Dominick Argento has published a memoir. "Having called Minneapolis home since he accepted a job at the University of Minnesota in 1958, he stayed mostly immune from the compositional fads of the day, and he encountered in the Twin Cities not just a host of organizations willing to commission works from him, but an audience that wanted to hear contemporary music." The Star-Tribune (Mpls) 01/30/05
Posted: 01/30/2005 10:39 pm
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Another Down Year For Ontario's Shaw Festival "Despite an increase in ticket sales over last season, the Shaw Festival has announced a significant deficit for the second consecutive season. At the festival's annual meeting in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont., on Friday, organizers revealed that the 2004 season ended with a deficit of $2.37 million, resulting in an accumulated deficit of $4.4 million." CBC 01/31/05
Posted: 01/31/2005 9:12 am
The West End's Best Year Ever London's West End theatres had their best year ever at the box office in 2004. "Almost 12m people attended a West End show in 2004, generating receipts of £341,758,566. The arrival of big musicals including Mary Poppins and The Producers is credited with pushing up ticket sales." BBC 01/31/05
Posted: 01/31/2005 7:53 am
Theatre Critics' Lament Any theatre critic who's been on the job for a while starts to see the same weaknesses over and over. "Repeated weekly exposure to the legitimate stage, although occasionally resulting in an exquisitely attuned creature like John Lahr, for the most part creates individuals who are primarily aware that a lot of the same mistakes are being made in a lot of different places." Back Stage 01/29/05
Posted: 01/30/2005 10:38 pm
The Schiller Phenomenon - Making It Big In London (After 200 Years) Schiller was one of the great German dramatists. Yet his work has never played well in Britain until now. But now he's a popular money-maker. "The idea that Schiller, shunned for the best part of two centuries by the British theatre, was now big box-office marked a historical watershed. So what has changed? And why is Schiller no longer box-office poison?" The Guardian (UK) 01/29/05
Posted: 01/30/2005 10:37 pm
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Enough With The Book Clubs! Book clubs, book clubs, everywhere. But so what, writes Li Robbins. Why do you need or want a club in which to read? "Reading is the greatest of great escapes. Reading is permission to simply be, to exist in another world, the world of the book. But you can’t maintain that Zen state when someone is wittering away about plot, tone and setting as though they are the new holy trinity." CBC 01/31/05
Posted: 01/31/2005 9:08 am
Flap Over Upcoming Disney Book The manuscript of a book critical of Disney was obtained by Disney, and the company is threatening legal action after regretting giving the author access to company execs and records. "Disney dashed off a letter to Simon & Schuster, warning that it would contemplate legal action if the book contained mistakes, according to several people involved in the book's publication. Simon & Schuster is asking that Disney return the 780-page unauthorized manuscript it obtained, saying Disney should not distribute it to news outlets or other concerns." The New York Times 01/31/05
Posted: 01/31/2005 8:49 am
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Foreign Video Sales are Hollywood's New Cash Cow "By most estimates and anecdotal evidence, revenues from international home video sales are the fastest-growing part of Hollywood's business. The most reliable estimate comes from Screen Digest, a British data company, which calculated that the home video divisions of the United States studios garnered $11.4 billion in wholesale revenues from the $24.6 billion that overseas consumers spent buying and renting home video products in 2004. What is more certain is that the windfall from overseas home video sales is affecting how the movie business is run. It is inflating budgets for films with big international potential." The New York Times 01/31/05
Posted: 01/31/2005 8:02 am
Sundance Closes, Documentaries Reign This year's Sundance Festival closes in a blaze of awards and respect for documentaries. "It was a weak year for the American dramatic competition and a strong one for documentaries, but the contrast between these groups of movies was not just a matter of quality. In any case, the dramatic jury had no trouble handing out prizes - it seems none of the juries did; there were more than 30 awards given." The New York T^imes 01/31/05
Posted: 01/31/2005 7:58 am
The Case For A Scorcese Oscar Hollywood should be feeling guilty, writes Michael Wilmington. Martin Scorcese has deserved an Oscar as Best Director at least three times before. Yet he's got nada. "Why should Marty Scorsese get the Oscar this time? More than anything else, because he's earned it. Though there's controversy about whether it's really 2004's best movie, The Aviator is currently the front-runner and favorite, by virtue of its pack-leading 11 nominations." So is this the year? Chicago Tribune 01/30/05
Posted: 01/31/2005 12:08 am
The Hollywood Beat: Journalism Without A Net Bernard Weinraub is retiring as Hollywood correspondent for the New York Times. After a tour covering the Vietnam war, Hollywood should have been a breeze. But "only in my 14 years here - most of it spent covering the movie industry, the rest covering television and music - did I come face to face with some of the more startling, and not always pleasant, truths about human behavior, my own included." The New York Times 01/30/05
Posted: 01/30/2005 10:31 pm
What You Want, When You Want It The expectation of the new entertainment consumer is that they should be able to watch what they want to watch when they want to watch it. And if the producers of these programs don't make it easy and attractive, then consumers will find other ways to get it. How about your own cable-TV set-top box? TV shows on your computer? Bottom line: entertainment moguls better figure out a business model to satisfy customers or they'll lose out. The New York Times 01/30/05
Posted: 01/30/2005 10:29 pm
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Is Christopher Wheeldon The Real Thing? (Maybe Not?) Christopher Wheeldon is touted as dance's next great genius. But Tobi Tobias is still to be convinced. "Most observers, dance critics in the lead, are so grateful for what Wheeldon can do, they don’t ask for much more. Me, I find nothing moving behind the craft—no hint of the deep feeling that can permeate ostensibly abstract work, no creation of an architectural universe that proposes a mysterious and absorbing world in itself." Seeing Things (AJBlogs) 01/30/05
Posted: 01/31/2005 12:36 am
Growing Ballet In Post-Apartheid South Africa "In the world of dance, one of South Africa's toughest townships may seem an unpromising place to start an academy for classical ballet. But hundreds of black children have been auditioning for the programme, part of an emerging generation that is taking the country's arts into a new post-apartheid era." The Guardian (UK) 01/31/05
Posted: 01/30/2005 11:35 pm
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