Viab-le Construction If robots can construct buildings, why shouldn't they be able to improvise on the job, creating form as well as function? That's the idea behind conceptual architect François Roche's design for an automated construction worker known as a 'viab'. "A viab would produce structures that are not set and specific, but impermanent and malleable - merely viable - made of a uniform, recyclable substance like adobe. The automaton's output would have no innate design, boundaries, or service life. It would take whatever form was called for at the moment." Wired 02/05
Posted: 02/10/2005 5:39 am
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The Gates Of Central Park: A Dream Fulfilled One New York City Parks Commissioner describes the artist Christo and his wife/collaborater Jeanne-Claude as "relentless, in the best New York City way," and the massive draping of Central Park is the proof. The project, which will come to fruition this weekend, is the culmination of a quarter-century of begging, cajoling, and convincing by the artists, who use the proceeds from small, collector-friendly works to fund their huge flights of artistic fancy. Washington Post 02/10/05
Posted: 02/10/2005 6:49 am
Less Than Cutting-Edge, By Design San Francisco is a cutting-edge city in so many ways, so why does it lag behind other big metropolises when it comes to innovative architecture? Perhaps it's not entirely a bad thing, especially if the city's reluctance to embrace New York-style modernism is rooted in a devotion to its own unique look. "[G]ood buildings here have deep roots. They're tied to their setting, whether it's a rural hillside or a city street, and they draw on what's around them... Second, there's a conscious attempt to build on the past in fresh ways, [and] finally, the good local architects appreciate how our urban world is shaped by nature. The Bay Area is not some blank slate waiting for buildings to shape the landscape. What makes this region special is the environment." San Francisco Chronicle 02/10/05
Posted: 02/10/2005 6:34 am
Freud Paintings Earn $15 Mil At Auction "Lucian Freud's painting of a naked and pregnant Kate Moss was sold at auction yesterday for $7.29 million (U.S.), and another Freud painting...'Red Haired Man on a Chair,' sold for a record $7.71 million." Toronto Star (AP) 02/10/05
Posted: 02/10/2005 5:45 am
London - Architecture Capital Of The World? "Architecture is London at its most diverse, something fundamental to its future as a leading international centre for design. But, despite this, few major established foreign architectural talents have settled here or opened important offices. So the arrival of a big New York heavyweight, Rafael Viñoly is a fascinating development." The Telegraph (UK) 02/10/05
Posted: 02/09/2005 9:24 pm
An Art "Happening" In Central Park Hundreds of volunteers are working hard in New York's Central Park this week to put up the 7,500 gates of Christo and Jeanne Claude's project. "While each team seemed diverse in age and profession, from college students to retired teachers and doctors, all had a common bond: a resolve to be a part of the city's biggest public-art happening ever." The New York Times 02/10/05
Posted: 02/09/2005 5:22 pm
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SLSO Strike Mediation Delayed Musicians and managers have finally agreed to mediation in the St. Louis Symphony strike, but bizarrely, the first session isn't scheduled until the middle of next week. Meanwhile "more of the orchestra's younger musicians than usual have been auditioning for other ensembles around the country. Though the SLSO is generally considered to be among the top 10 orchestras in the United States, St. Louis ranks 19th in base pay for its musicians." In other words, time is of the essence in this dispute, and the lack of urgency on both sides is beginning to grate. St. Louis Post-Dispatch 02/10/05
Posted: 02/10/2005 6:28 am
Cleveland Orchestra Headed To Miami Since the demise of the Florida Philharmonic two years ago, observers have been wondering just exactly who the under-construction Greater Miami Performing Arts Center is being built for. Now, an answer has emerged, courtesy of the chairman who presided over the Phil's disbanding: the center will open in 2007 with a 3-week residency by the Cleveland Orchestra. It's good news for South Florida music lovers, of course, but some former Philharmonic musicians are furious, suggesting that chairman Daniel Lewis, who has given $12 million to the Clevelanders over the years, allowed the Phil to die knowing that he could bring in a visiting orchestra more cheaply. South Florida Sun-Sentinel 02/10/05
Posted: 02/10/2005 5:15 am
Live Music While You Hold A UK company is experimenting with the music its customers hear while on hold on the telephone. It is presenting live music while you wait, with a string quartet. "The exercise reflects the increasing exploitation of the time customers spend on hold as a marketing opportunity - whether by subtly expressing corporate values via the choice of music, or taking advantage of a captive audience to "advise" customers about services or offers." The Guardian (UK) 02/10/05
Posted: 02/09/2005 9:36 pm
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Cutting Edge Seattle Org Cuts Loose Director Consolidated Works is one of Seattle's premiere contemporary art spaces. But the organization has been going through turmoil recently, and Wednesday ConWorks founding director Mattew Richter was suddenly fired, leaving only one employee on the payroll (And he's only been on the job two weeks). Seattle Post-Intelligencer 02/09/05
Posted: 02/10/2005 4:57 pm
Well, You Know Vancouver Would Be Pissed Toronto has been designated one of Canada's "Cultural Capitals." So what, says Martin Knelman? "Can we be frank? This is hardly a reason for Toronto to throw its collective hat in the air and honk its horn on Yonge St. as if the Leafs had won the Stanley Cup. The Culture Capital designation is part of the recently renewed Tomorrow Starts Today program, designed to shower money on the arts... But what if Ottawa were to embrace the notion that Canada desperately needs a cultural capital able to compete with European and U.S. cultural centres, and came to the conclusion there is only one city in Canada that can realistically aspire to achieve that goal — Toronto?" Toronto Star 02/10/05
Posted: 02/10/2005 6:40 am
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The Berman Factor "Until January 2004, when he announced his retirement from the concert platform on grounds of ill-health, Lazar Berman played and recorded tirelessly, releasing studio and live performances that soon built up a discography of considerable dimensions. His concerto recordings include fabled accounts of the Rachmaninov Third (with Leonard Bernstein) and Tchaikovsky First (Herbert von Karajan). In an age obsessed with firework virtuosity Lazar Berman brought the requisite flawless technique - but one informed with a powerful Romantic urge. It was a deliberate reaction." The Independent (UK) 02/09/05
Posted: 02/09/2005 4:45 pm
Lazar Berman, 74 Lazar Berman, a big bear of a Russian pianist who was greeted with wild acclaim when he was allowed to travel to the West in 1976, has died at his home in Italy. "A pianist with a bearlike build, a shock of sandy hair and a disarming smile, Mr. Berman had a gentle manner that seemed at odds with his often-muscular approach to the piano. His repertory, though, was broader than his reputation would suggest." The New York Times 02/09/05
Posted: 02/09/2005 12:48 pm
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What Good Is A Song If No One Knows It? "Imagine a world where the songbooks of American composers, from Jerome Kern to Richard Rodgers to Stephen Sondheim, have never been recorded or captured on film and the only people who knew them well were the performers who originated the roles on-stage and a small community of cabaret connoisseurs... [T]hat hypothetically apocalyptic scenario is the reality of the younger, but equally pedigreed world of English Canadian musical theatre. Hundreds of Canadian shows and thousands of songs have been written in the past 60 or 70 years for which there are no recordings or, in many cases, no musical charts." Now, a group of performers is trying to fill the void, creating an aural and written record. The Globe & Mail (Canada) 02/10/05
Posted: 02/10/2005 5:59 am
Steppenwolf Not Looking Back "To celebrate its 30th anniversary throughout the 2005-06 season, [Chicago's] Steppenwolf Theatre has decided to take five big risks. For the first time in its history its principal subscription series will be made up entirely of new works." Four of the five productions have already been announced, including new plays by Richard Greenberg and Steven Dietz. Chicago Sun-Times 02/10/05
Posted: 02/10/2005 5:52 am
Livent Investors Win $23.3 Million Settlement Investors in Livent the former theatrical producer headed by Garth Drabinsky, have won a $23.3 million settlement against the company. The judgment "settles a six-year-old lawsuit filed by 200 investors who bought $125 million in corporate bonds offered in late 1997 by Livent, which had produced musicals including "Ragtime" and "Showboat" on Broadway in the 1990's. Less than a year after issuing the bonds, however, Livent - a publicly held company - announced that it had discovered substantial accounting irregularities and declared bankruptcy." The New York Times 02/09/05
Posted: 02/09/2005 5:11 pm
A Play Too Shocking? (Why? The Classics Did It) Philip Ridley's new play is so shocking his publisher refued to have anything to do with it. He wonders: "Why is it that it is fine for the classic plays to discuss - even show - these things, but people are outraged when contemporary playwrights do it? If you go to see King Lear, you see a man having his eyes pulled out; in Medea, a woman slaughters her own children. The recent revival of Iphigenia at the National was acclaimed for its relevance. But when you try to write about the world around us, people get upset. If I'd wrapped Mercury Fur up as a recently rediscovered Greek tragedy it would be seen as an interesting moral debate like Iphigenia, but because it is set on an east-London housing estate it is seen as being too dangerous to talk about. What does that say about the world we live in? What does it say about theatre today?" The Guardian (UK) 02/09/05
Posted: 02/09/2005 5:03 pm
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More Drama At Disney The line of succession at the Walt Disney Company has been blurry ever since chairman and CEO Michael Eisner agreed to step down last year, and a new book detailing many behind-the-scenes power struggles within the company seems likely to make choosing a new top mouse even harder. Philadelphia Inquirer (LA Times) 02/10/05
Posted: 02/10/2005 6:17 am
TV Does Not Rot Your Brain (Okay, MTV Might) Bad television is still bad television, but television as a medium may not be as bad for our minds as we've always suspected. Decades of research make it clear that moderate amounts of television viewing can actually open cognitive doors for children, provided that the program being watched has an educational bent. "A child who watches Sesame Street in preschool will not only be better at recognizing letters and numbers in Grade 1, but will also be more willing to learn. And the change is not short-lived." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 02/10/05
Posted: 02/10/2005 6:03 am
BritCrit Awards Announced The London Critics Circle Film Awards were handed out this week, with Martin Scorsese taking home best director honors for his biopic of Howard Hughes, The Aviator, and the surprise highbrow comedy hit Sideways winning best film. BBC 02/10/05
Posted: 02/10/2005 5:33 am
A Protest Against Copyrighted History Across the US Tuesday, activists screened the documentary "Eyes on the Prize, in defiance of the copyright law. The program, "which debuted on PBS in 1987, can no longer be broadcast on television and has never been released on DVD due to a tangle of licensing issues. When the film was first made, each piece of newsreel footage, photograph and song used in the 14-part series had to be licensed from its copyright holder. Due to limited funding, the filmmakers could only afford to buy rights to the material for a certain number of years, and now those rights have expired." Wired 02/09/05
Posted: 02/09/2005 4:30 pm
Women Lag Behind In UK Film Pay Women earn substantially less than men in the UK film industry, according to a new study. "Only 16% of women earn more than £50,000, compared with 30% of men. Women make up a third of the workforce." BBC 02/09/05
Posted: 02/09/2005 4:14 pm
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Is British Ballet Really In Trouble With The Girls? "Last week, former ballerina Dame Antoinette Sibley announced that the future of British ballet looked bleak, pointing to a lack of home-grown principals in British ballet companies: two out of 16 at the Royal Ballet, two out of 12 at English National Ballet and three out of 12 at Birmingham Royal Ballet. She also quoted what she called "shocking" figures from the Royal Academy of Dance showing a 67% drop-out rate of students at age 10-11. Is this really so surprising? After all, this is the age for dancers when the hard work really kicks in, and clothes and boys start to seem more appealing to many girls than pliés and pointe work. Not to mention that the stick-thin physique that dancers strive for is often thwarted by the development of womanly curves." The Guardian (UK) 02/10/05
Posted: 02/09/2005 9:43 pm
Where's The Dance Audience? How do you build a new audience for dance? "Creating an environment where experimentation can flourish requires rethinking dance appreciation from the bottom up. It requires expanded school field trips and in-class curriculum where dance is seen as an integral part of world history, public television broadcasts and dance in other free media, lecture-demonstrations, explanatory pre-concert talks, sophisticated program notes and a return to serious, in-depth arts criticism that recognizes that the arts deliver the news the culture tells about itself -- whether that work is presented for one ephemeral night or enjoys a lucrative, year-long run." WBUR (Boston) 02/09/05
Posted: 02/09/2005 12:55 pm
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