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Weekend, July 2-3




Ideas

New Ideas About How We Think "For decades, the cognitive and neural sciences have treated mental processes as though they involved passing discrete packets of information in a strictly feed-forward fashion from one cognitive module to the next or in a string of individuated binary symbols -- like a digital computer. More recently, however, a growing number of studies support dynamical-systems approaches to the mind. In this model, perception and cognition are mathematically described as a continuous trajectory through a high-dimensional mental space; the neural activation patterns flow back and forth to produce nonlinear, self-organized, emergent properties -- like a biological organism." Cornell News 06/05
Posted: 07/03/2005 10:59 am

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Visual Arts

Where Art And Biology Meet "Called bioart or wetware by some of its practitioners, the field is growing rapidly in the United States and Europe, and it is producing bizarre and sometimes disturbing work that seems sprung right from the pages of Philip K. Dick or Koji Suzuki, except that the science involved is not fiction. In many ways bioart represents a logical next step in contemporary art, which has eagerly embraced new approaches and nontraditional materials: video and computers beginning in the 1960's and 70's, digital technology and the Internet in the 90's. But bioart can credibly claim to have made a more revolutionary break with tradition." The New york Times 07/03/05
Posted: 07/03/2005 11:51 am

A Tale Of Two Lloyd Wright Houses One Los Angeles Frank Lloyd Wright house renovated, another falling down a hill. "If only it were that simple. It turns out that Ennis-Brown, once you get past the gaping holes on its lower flank, looks surprisingly good, particularly its stunning split-level living and dining room space — though that shouldn't dissuade you from making a donation to help shore it up. And at the Barnsdall House, the handsome renovations can't disguise the dispiriting mess the city has made, and continues to make, of its site or that behind its low walls is one of Wright's least appealing domestic interiors." Los Angeles Times 07/03/05
Posted: 07/03/2005 11:45 am

Still Looking - Raising Interest In a Clyfford Still Museum Where is money for Denver's new $20 million Clyfford Still Museum goinbg to come from? "People have been waiting and wondering what was going to happen with the Still estate for years and years. And I think the news it is going to land safely some place as prominent as Denver is going to be greeted not only with a huge sigh of relief from the international art crowd but also an expectation of something great." Denver Post 07/03/05
Posted: 07/03/2005 11:36 am

Freedom Tower - Death By 1000 Cuts Blair Kamen adds his voice to those criticizing the latest plans for the WTC Freedom Tower. "The problems, evident in almost every aspect of the rebuilding, threaten to undermine the carefully conceived balance between remembrance and renewal that was the hallmark of Daniel Libeskind's brilliant, competition-winning master plan. What they add up to is death by a thousand cuts rather a single mortal blow -- and the danger that unless public officials here stop their blather about everything going smoothly, the rebuilt ground zero will turn out to be a whittled-down version of Libeskind's plan rather than a sparkling realization." Chicago Tribune 07/03/05
Posted: 07/03/2005 11:25 am

Dull, Dull, Dull - Shouldn't An Opera House Be More? The design of Toronto's new opera house is... well... pretty dull. "There's nothing wrong with the new complex, but instead of something spectacular, it is polite, well mannered, deferential, even self-effacing. That would be fine if it were anything else, but this is, after all, an opera house, not a downtown shopping centre. What is opera if not spectacle?" Toronto Star 07/03/05
Posted: 07/03/2005 10:49 am

Saatchi Omits Brits Charles Saatchi, long a champion of Brtish artists, is presenting a show without any homegrown talent. "Saatchi last omitted British artists from an exhibition in the 1987 New York Now show in his north London gallery." BBC 07/03/05
Posted: 07/03/2005 10:20 am

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Music

At The Opera - The English Debate A debate rages at the English National Opera about whether using supertitles is necessary for operas sung in English. Anthony Tommasini appreciates the arguments on both side: "In my passions and my ideals, I side with the purists about the threat titles represent to opera in English. Having this crutch is bound to undermine the heritage slowly but steadily: audiences will look to the screens rather than pay attention to the singers; singers, knowing that audiences are relying on the projected texts, will cut corners on diction so that they can linger on a luscious sustained tone. Yet the pragmatist in me understands the frustrations of sitting through an opera in English when you cannot make out the words. Nothing induces passivity, even hostility, to opera more than that." The New York Times 07/03/05
Posted: 07/03/2005 12:18 pm

Of America's Gay And Straight Composers... Where does the classic "American" sound come from? Aaron Copland "was one of a group of composers who, starting in the 1930s, cultivated a new nationalist – or at least populist modernist – style. And most of them were gay, including Virgil Thomson, Samuel Barber, Leonard Bernstein, David Diamond, Lou Harrison, Paul Bowles, Marc Blitzstein and Ned Rorem. By contrast, most of the pricklier modernists, including Charles Ives, Elliott Carter and Roger Sessions, were straight." Dallas Morning News 07/03/05
Posted: 07/03/2005 11:31 am

Tanglewood Begins Levine Era James Levine starts his first summer leading the Tanglewood Festival. "Everyone expects Tanglewood to be transformed in the Levine era, but no one knows yet what direction the changes will take. Levine has been at the Boston Symphony Orchestra's summer home, festival, and school only twice before, as an audience member in 1956, when he was 13, and as a guest conductor in 1972. He's been careful to say that he needs to experience the way Tanglewood does things before thinking about making changes. Change is one of the things Tanglewood is supposed to be about." Boston Globe 07/03/05
Posted: 07/03/2005 11:14 am

What Happened To Sexy Music? "Switch on the radio, grab a glance at MTV. Because something odd is happening, and it's been going on for a while now. Here, it appears that there are few women or men anywhere to be heard. There are the breathy voices of ingenues; the mewling of babies; the shouts of a teenage tantrum; the whines of adolescent boys. BoyzIIMen? Please." spiked-online 07/01/05
Posted: 07/03/2005 10:35 am

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Arts Issues

Fortress America: Foreign Travel To The US Is Way Down "Planned federal passport and visa rules and other measures intended to safeguard the nation are creating the perception of a Fortress America overseas, tarnishing this country's reputation for hospitality and personal freedom. As a consequence, visa applications from foreign travelers have dropped by one-third from pre-Sept. 11 levels, and fewer foreign students are applying to U.S. schools. Moreover, travel agents report booking foreign travelers away from the United States, and airlines that serve overseas hot spots say business is down on their routes to the United States." San Francisco Chronicle 07/03/05
Posted: 07/03/2005 11:04 am

Aussie Artists Protest Plan To Kill Compulsory University Union Fees A move by the Australian government to to do away with compulsory student union fees at universities has artists concerned. "Every year, students pay a compulsory union fee, which varies between $100 and $500, depending on the campus. Student-run bodies use the money to pay for services such as food and bar subsidies, sporting grounds, advocacy services, galleries and campus sport and arts clubs. A proportion is also used to fund political pursuits, including campaigns against higher university fees. The Government says students who never use these services or don't join campus clubs shouldn't be forced to pay for them, and has drafted a bill to make the fee voluntary." Artists say the cut in fee collections will kill programs. Sydney Morning Herald 07/03/05
Posted: 07/03/2005 10:54 am

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People

Lockhart - Ten Years At Pops It's been ten years since Keith Lockhart took over the Boston Pops Orchestra. "Now, at 45, having led more than 800 Pops performances, Lockhart feels the weight of his increasingly demanding schedule and the economic pressures facing the orchestra." Boston Globe 07/03/05
Posted: 07/03/2005 11:10 am

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Theatre

Hooked On The Advance Sale Broadway's "The Odd Couple" has already sold $18 million in advance sale. That leaves few tickets available when they go on sale this week to the general public. "The type of advance sale that "The Odd Couple" offered through American Express is increasingly popular among producers, guaranteeing money in the bank long before the reviews come in. It also cuts down on costs, reducing the need to advertise after the show opens." The New York Times 07/03/05
Posted: 07/03/2005 12:30 pm

West End's TV Stars Leave Town Empty It's been fashionable for American movie and TV stars to try their hand at theatre in London's West End. But "their performances refute the seemingly self-evident principle that human flesh generates more heat than celluloid. These actors are all playing the sorts of irresistible sexual enchanters from whom a wink is as good as a kiss." But what works on screen doesn't necessarily translate to the stage. The New York Times 07/03/05
Posted: 07/03/2005 12:26 pm

An Actor Weighs In On Critics Why isn't American theatre criticism more of a "companion piece" than a Consumer Reports verdict, wonders Anna Shapiro. "Two things baffle me and make me angry, and they are this: When somebody writes about a new play and says the play is beautiful; the production is beautiful; the performances are stunning; the directing is weak. That makes me angry. But not as angry as: The direction is beautiful; the production is wonderful; the actors are amazing; the play is weak. That makes even less sense to me." Chicago Tribune 07/03/05
Posted: 07/03/2005 11:23 am

The Actors And The Cattle Call "For the last quarter century, for five days every summer, the League of Washington Theatres has held an open audition -- a cattle call for local actors. Eight hundred or so people get to shovel their head shots, résumés and 90-second monologues into the faces of auditors from a couple of casting agencies and 54 local theaters (more precisely, 53 local theaters and, for some reason, the Actors Theatre of Louisville). Your odds aren't great, but sometimes people get discovered and cast in meaty roles." Washington Post 07/03/05
Posted: 07/03/2005 10:40 am

Mass Shakespeare For Kids Ten thousand children from 400 schools in the UK are taking part is a mass shakespeare event. "The event - One Night of Shakespeare - is a collaboration between the BBC and Shakespeare Schools Festival. Organisers hope to enter the Guinness World Records for the most performances of Shakespeare on one night. Pupils will perform their own interpretations of shortened versions of some of Shakespeare's plays, directed and produced by their teachers." BBC 07/03/05
Posted: 07/03/2005 10:25 am

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Publishing

Now That's A Lot Of Penguins Penguin is offering a collection of every book it has published. "Laid down page by page and end to end, the Penguin Classics Library Complete Collection would stretch about 84 kilometres, or about the same distance as a morning commute to downtown Toronto from Kitchener. And it can all be yours — all half a million pages of it — for the low price of $7,989.99." Toronto Star 07/03/05
Posted: 07/03/2005 10:41 am

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Media

Coming To A TV Near You - 3D Next generation TV sets promise some serious geek bling - and 3D. "Ordinary TV sets deliver 500 lines of resolution. Most high-definition screens reach 1,050. The HD3D hits 1,280 lines and counting - which means better picture quality than that of any TV available today, all in a convincing impression of the third dimension. And here's the seriously trippy part about the new screen, which Deep Light plans to introduce at next winter's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas: multiple "blades" of video enable one screen to show different programs to different viewers, at the same time." The New York Times 07/03/05
Posted: 07/03/2005 12:22 pm

Cheap DVD Sales Booming "While overall DVD sales are robust - last year retailers sold $15.5 billion in discs - the low-end market is positively booming. Recently, 19 of the 50 top sellers on the Nielsen VideoScan national sales charts were budget DVD's." How budget? There are plenty on offer from 99 cents to $1.99. The New York Times 07/03/05
Posted: 07/03/2005 11:53 am

Movie Downturn? It's Because They're Not Very Good Hollywood is full of excuses why movie box office is down so much this spring. But. "None of the half-dozen excuses is sufficient, nor as convincing as the most obvious explanation: The current movies are particularly bad. Though popular success and quality have no direct relationship (The Pacifier and Hitch both made more than $100-million), audiences may have finally got tired after a particularly lousy string of weekend releases." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 07/03/05
Posted: 07/03/2005 11:40 am

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Dance

Paris' New Dance Festival Paris has a "new three-week festival, Les Étés de la Danse de Paris (Paris Dance Summers), which will be inaugurated with three world premieres on Tuesday by the San Francisco Ballet. Despite an intense interest in the art form, the city has lacked a summer dance festival since 2001, when it withdrew its underwriting. The Paris Opera Ballet shuts before Bastille Day and nothing in dance happens after that for both tourists and the Paris public." The New York Times 07/03/05
Posted: 07/03/2005 12:14 pm

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