In Minneapolis: Wireless Internet As Basic Public Infrastructure The city of Minneapolis is to go wireless. The city will be covered with a wireless internet connection available to anyone. "Consumers would be able to buy broadband access of 1 million to 3 million bits per second for $18 to $24 a month -- a bit slower than wired cable modem service but about half the price. The network also is expected to create an economic incentive for businesses to locate in Minneapolis. If someone gets off a plane at the airport and signs up for Minneapolis Internet service, they can sign on with one password anywhere in the city." The Star-Tribune (Mpls) 04/12/05
Posted: 04/12/2005 8:14 am
Who Owns The Copyright? (A Tale Of Orphans) A big problem with the current copyright laws is that it's difficult or impossible to trace the owners of the vast majority of older works protected by copyright. "Even if the risk of a copyright infringement claim is low, creators who build on another's work do not want to take the risk of getting sued. Copyright owners can ask for up to $150,000 damages per work infringed." Now the US copyright office is trying to address the problem, and asking for help. Wired 04/12/05
Posted: 04/12/2005 7:18 am
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Chicago Art Institute To Expand The Art Institute of Chicago is acquiring land next to its current building so it can build a 230,000 square foot addition. "Art Institute officials last year placed the cost of the addition at $198 million, more than half of which they had already raised. They also planned to raise another $87 million for an endowment for the addition, which according to district documents will house modern, contemporary, Asian, Islamic and architectural collections. About 65,000 square feet would be dedicated to gallery space and another 15,300 square feet will be dedicated to educational programs." Chicago Tribune 04/12/05
Posted: 04/12/2005 6:54 am
Mona Lisa In Her New Home The Mona Lisa gets a new gallery home of her own, and crowds throng to the Louvre. "The Mona Lisa is not so much "hung" on its special wall as set, like a jewel, within it. With its stylishly brushed sgraffito surroundings, at once bare and luxurious, and its solitary magnificence behind glass, it's for all the world like a watch in Cartier's window. You need to be in the right frame of mind, but you can, for the first time in my memory, get a decent acquaintance with the Mona Lisa. Intimacy, even. So it's finally possible to ask yourself critically: is she worth it?" The Guardian (UK) 04/11/05
Posted: 04/11/2005 10:01 pm
Reinventing The Walker The bigger Walker Arts Center is attempting to reinvent itself while it expands. "The Walker seems to be one of the few places in the world that tries tackling the progressive element of each art form. The MOMA doesn't do that, the Guggenheim doesn't do that, the Whitney doesn't do that." St. Paul Pioneer-Press 04/10/05
Posted: 04/11/2005 7:18 pm
A Museum To Atomic Testing The Atomic Test Site Museum has opened just off the Las Vegas Strip. "The 8,000-square-foot museum, which opened in March, is the fruit of a decade of work by the Nevada Test Site Historical Foundation. The ticket booth resembles the site's guard station; the movie theater looks like a bunker. "Countdown to next show," flashes an ominous red clock. A roar and a blast of air greet visitors in the concrete theater." OpinionJournal.com 04/12/05
Posted: 04/11/2005 7:09 pm
In Art: 100 Naked Women And Some Scuffling To Get Close An Vanessa Beecroft art happening at a museum in Berlin featuring 100 naked women caused a commotion at its opening. "Scuffles broke out late last Friday as people tried to jump over the barriers to get closer to the women, aged between 18 and 65, wearing see-through stockings and greased with baby oil, who arranged themselves according to the instructions of US artist Vanessa Beecroft." ABCNews 04/11/05
Posted: 04/11/2005 6:16 pm
- Beecroft And The Case For Nude Women Vanessa Beecroft's performance in Berlin with 100 naked women is her biggest show ever. Certainly, there is plenty about Beecroft's work that is voyeuristic. The most interesting aspect of the new work is "its almost calculating cruelty: this evening's public performance lasts for three hours. Apart from the odd stretch and yawn, the women are instructed to remain as still and silent as possible. Towards the end they can lie down. Yesterday, at the preview, attended by dozens of journalists and TV crews, several of the "girls" as Beecroft calls them sat down exhausted. Most looked distinctly bored." The Guardian (UK) 04/11/05
Posted: 04/11/2005 6:05 pm
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Why You Want To Be A RingHead Why are people so fanatical about wanting to see Wagner's Ring cycle? "The enthusiasm of the hardcore "Ring" fans must have a major effect on people wanting to see The Ring" again and again. Compared to the average opera and symphony performance, the rampant exuberance and giddiness of the audience here was infectious and unmatched in all but a few other concert events. Just as important was the camaraderie. Not strangers, this was a group of acquaintances through the common love of "The Ring." Opera crowds are often icy by nature; this one was inviting. Every time I walked back to my hotel I got in a long conversation about "The Ring" with a different person, most people I had never seen before. Who wouldn't want to again be a part of a crowd like that if you are remotely into opera? The passion rivaled fans of a team in the playoffs, but with art, music and philosophy on everyone's lips." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 04/12/05
Posted: 04/12/2005 8:56 am
How Download Will Change The Top 40 UK Singles charts will soon begin counting legal downloads alongside cd sales, and the songs that make the Top 40 are sure to change. "In the first three months of 2005, 4.5 million songs were downloaded legally in the UK - compared with 5.8 million bought over the counter. Many of the fans who stopped buying singles are now keen on downloading - and while single-buying is largely left to teenage girls, downloaders are overwhelmingly male and more mature.
So their return to the chart returns could have a big impact on the Top 40." BBC 04/12/05
Posted: 04/12/2005 7:10 am
Another La Scala Resignation The president of the orchestra of La Scala has resigned, a week after Riccardo Muti quit the company. Fedele Confalonieri, "who is also president of Mediaset, a broadcaster controlled by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, gave no explanation for his departure in a brief statement released by his company." BBC 04/12/05
Posted: 04/12/2005 7:05 am
Music In Progress leaked To Internet More and more, musicians are finding recordings of music they're still working on leaked on the internet. "Because of internet leaks, artists don’t have control of their own music anymore. There is a lot of material to be honed and worked on — and some of it is very, very bad. There is a reason why artists don’t want people to hear it." CBC 04/12/05
Posted: 04/12/2005 6:59 am
Sony BMG Restructures Classical Recording Business Sony BMG says it is restructuring its classical music business under the name Sony BMG Masterworks. "It is intended not only to evoke past glories - Masterworks was CBS's flagship classical line long before Sony bought the company from CBS in 1989 - but also to signal a renewed commitment to the core classical repertory." The New York Times 04/12/05
Posted: 04/11/2005 10:42 pm
Has Opera Lost Its Personality? Lisa Saffer on what's wrong with today's opera world: "I think the business has shifted recently: money speaks more than it should, and that means taking safe choices: people have become too afraid of making mistakes. Singers get talked at the whole time and coached within an inch of their lives - and the result is a passivity which depresses me. There's plenty of polish around, but the rough edges which give the music character are being ironed out. We need more singers with something of their own to say, singers who engage spontaneously with the music." The Telegraph (UK) 04/11/05
Posted: 04/11/2005 10:26 pm
Berlin Symphonic Orchestra Disbands Members of the Berlin Symphonic Orchestra bid farewell to their fans with a last concert on Sunday after orchestra officials failed to secure 80,000 euros ($103,000) in emergency funding for the bankrupt organization. Deutsche Welle 04/11/05
Posted: 04/11/2005 7:02 pm
Denver Hall Needs $40 Million Fix An acoustical fix for Denver's Boettcher Hall is going to cost more than $40 million. Last year the director of Denver's Division of Theatres and Arenas, estimated the project's price tag at $25 million to $40 million. But he now says he believes that "when the firm completes the second half of its study later this spring, it will recommend gutting Boettcher and essentially building a new, reconfigured concert hall within its existing walls." Denver Post 04/10/05
Posted: 04/11/2005 6:06 pm
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In Ohio: Smoking For The Arts "The Ohio House Finance Committee made a change to the proposed state budget Monday morning that would allow cigarette taxes in Cuyahoga County to be raised by as much as 25 cents per pack to support a countywide arts and cultural district." The Plain Dealer 04/12/05
Posted: 04/12/2005 9:00 am
Staking Out The Creative Process "The new Calgary-based Institute for the Creative Process -- or ICP@ACAD, for short -- is being built on the belief that artists and designers should be making meaningful contributions to the real world beyond the design of a new Coca-Cola bottle or simple manufacture of product. The ICP will be working with businesses and various community groups to apply creative design solutions to everyday social and organizational problems. In addition to developing partnerships and thinking up new graduate-degree possibilities for the college, the ICP will be responsible for cultivating dialogue and research activities that directly address the nature and application of the creative process." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 04/12/05
Posted: 04/12/2005 8:01 am
American U's Fall Back In Programming Competition "American universities -- once the dominant force in the information technology world -- fell far down the ranks in a widely watched international computer programming contest held this week. Asian and Eastern European schools have been scoring increasingly well in the world championship. A U.S. school hasn't won since 1997, when students at Harvey Mudd College proved best." San Francisco Chronicle 04/11/05
Posted: 04/11/2005 9:06 pm
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Judith Regan - The Angriest Publisher In New York? Judith Regan is "arguably the most successful publisher in the world today, she runs a small imprint with a huge hit rate. So far this year, ReganBooks - part of the HarperCollins empire - has notched up 11 titles in the New York Times bestseller list, including four number ones in the space of six weeks. Even her critics describe her as the smartest woman in publishing. And yet they also have a few more superlatives for her, including the "angriest woman in the media" and - if Vanity Fair magazine is to be believed - a strong candidate for the nastiest person in New York." The Telegraph (UK) 04/11/05
Posted: 04/11/2005 10:14 pm
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ReganBooks To LA Judith Regan says she's moving her publishing and media group from Manhattan and relocating to Los Angeles. "In doing so, ReganBooks, which is part of HarperCollins, which is in turn owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, would be one of the few major book imprints to be based outside Manhattan and one of the first to leave New York for the West Coast. The move could shake up an industry that has long operated in a parochial, Manhattan-centric fashion, even as technology has made the location of a company less important." The New York Times 04/12/05
Posted: 04/11/2005 10:50 pm
Dana Gioia: Why Books Matter "A strange thing has happened in the American arts during the past quarter century. While income rose to unforeseen levels, college attendance ballooned, and access to information increased enormously, the interest young Americans showed in the arts -- and especially literature -- actually diminished. That individuals at a time of crucial intellectual and emotional development bypass the joys and challenges of literature is a troubling trend. If it were true that they substituted histories, biographies, or political works for literature, one might not worry. But book reading of any kind is falling as well." Boston Globe 04/10/05
Posted: 04/11/2005 9:22 pm
France: Fighting Off Google's World-Wide Domination Does Google's global reach create "the risk of a crushing domination by America in the definition of the idea that future generations will have of the world?" The president of the Frnech National Library believes so. "Europe, he said, should counterattack by converting its own books into digital files and by controlling the page rankings of responses to searches. His one-man campaign bore fruit. At a meeting on March 16, President Jacques Chirac of France asked Mr. Jeanneney and the culture minister, Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, to study how French and European library collections could be rapidly made available on the Web." The New York Times 04/11/05
Posted: 04/11/2005 8:34 am
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Sony: Movies That Smell Sony has patented an idea for smelling movies. "The Japanese electronics giant hopes to develop a device that will bombard viewers with pulses of ultrasound that will stimulate neural activity in our brains and have us smell something we're seeing on the screen. Not only that, but we'll be able taste on cue and, possibly, have the sensation of being touched." New York Daily News 04/12/05
Posted: 04/12/2005 8:41 am
CBC Axes PR Staff Trying to save money, the CBC has laid off much of its public relations staff. The corporation says it will outsource much of the publicity for both radio and TV to independent public-relations firms.
The Globe & Mail (Canada) 04/12/05
Posted: 04/12/2005 8:07 am
How Do You Measure TV? "For the past decade or so, watching television in America has been defined by the families recruited by Nielsen Media Research who have agreed to have an electronic meter attached to their televisions or to record in a diary what shows they watch. This setup may not last much longer. Just as programmers and advertisers are clamoring for a better understanding of the television audience, a wave of new consumer products has made it increasingly difficult to satisfy them." The New York Times 04/10/05
Posted: 04/11/2005 11:20 pm
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What's At Stake: National Ballet Of Canada Comes To NY The National Ballet of Canada is back touring, and after a seven year absence, has performed in New York. Being seen in the dance capital is as much about image as dance: "When Americans see that we represent world class standards in the arts, it gives us a different image than mountains and Mounties. A visit such as that of the National Ballet to the Brooklyn Academy is crucial to what we do here." But the reviews have not been kind, and the theatre was not full. So what now? Toronto Star 04/12/05
Posted: 04/12/2005 9:13 am
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