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Tuesday, August 23




Visual Arts

Kurtz V. FBI, Round 487 Artist Steve Kurtz is still fighting off the FBI, which wanted to charge him with bioterrorism. "Kurtz used the analogy of a coffee grinder purchase to explain why the stakes in his case are so much weightier than artistic censorship. 'Let's say you go out and by a coffee grinder. And it says on it that you can't grind spices in it, only coffee. And you say, to hell with that, I'm going to grind coffee and spices in it. If you do that and you send in your warranty -- mail fraud. If they pull off that argument in court, it'll make almost anyone vulnerable'." San Francisco Chronicle 08/23/05
Posted: 08/23/2005 8:00 am

Peru, Pyramids And An Ancient Civilization Ruins on Peru’s desert coast are 4,700 years old and suggest civilization in the Americas is far older than previously thought. "The site of Caral, in the Supe Valley north of Lima, covers 66 hectares (165 acres) and includes pyramids 21m (70ft) high arranged around a large plaza. Whether it can truly be seen as a civilisation comparable in attainment with contemporary Egypt and Mesopotamia is doubtful, but it demonstrates that the tradition culminating in the Inca Empire had deeper roots than anyone imagined." The Times (UK) 08/20/05
Posted: 08/23/2005 7:24 am

Brit Arrested In Egypt For Manuscript Smuggling A British man has been arrested in Egypt trying to smuggle 66 ancient manuscriots out of the country. "The texts, identified by experts as being from the Islamic era, are said to have been subject to an export ban. They were found in the man's luggage after an X-ray at Cairo airport as he headed for a flight to Paris." BBC 08/23/05
Posted: 08/23/2005 6:36 am

Police Hunt Eight In "Scream" Theft Norwegian police are looking for eight suspects in the theft last year of Edvard Munch's "The Scream". "The painting was stolen from Oslo's Munch Museum a year ago, when thieves held up staff with a gun and stole the artwork from the wall. Five others have already been arrested, with three remaining in custody." BBC 08/23/05
Posted: 08/23/2005 6:33 am

When Sears Sold Picassos So Costco is selling Picassos online. "But no one seems to remember that what Costco is doing is nothing new. Forty years ago, Sears, Roebuck & Co. was selling Picassos and Chagalls, not to mention Rembrandts, Dürers, Goyas, Whistlers, Mondrians and Wyeths, all of them bearing the imprimatur of a celebrated connoisseur who was better known for making such grisly movies as The Fly and House of Wax." OpinionJournal.com 08/23/05
Posted: 08/22/2005 10:21 pm

Danto: Critic Of Post-History "The same year he declared art history to be over, Arthur Danto became The Nation's art critic. With no dominant movement to champion or art-historical future to prophesize, he redefined art criticism as the 'first post-historical critic of art'." The Nation 08/18/05
Posted: 08/22/2005 8:42 pm

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Music

Warner Does Away With CD's In "E-Label" Warner is setting up a new label that will produce music in electronic form only. "New and niche musicians will be signed to the "e-label" without the pressures or costs of recording, manufacturing and distributing full albums. Warner chairman Edgar Bronfman Jr described the move as 'revolutionary'." BBC 08/23/05
Posted: 08/23/2005 6:30 am

Why Is Classical Music Dismissed As Elitist? There's a prevailing wisdom that "classical music is elitist, inaccessible, stuffy, boring and uncool. As a mass-market view, it would be wonderful to be able to turn it into something less dismissive, more embracing, more informed. The success of Classic FM, the affordable riches of the Proms, Radio 3's tie-loosening and the vibrant marketing/education/ programming initiatives of my colleagues around the country can all counter the insidious tendency to use the C-word as a jeer word. Such leadership and advocacy can't be done by the classical music fraternity alone. The broader constituency of intelligent, educated, culturally literate people (OK, you) needs to back classical music, too." The Guardian (UK) 08/23/05
Posted: 08/22/2005 9:41 pm

A New Music Downloading Scheme A new music download service promises to revolutionize the download model. "Subscribers will be charged £26 a month for a high speed broadband internet connection, similar to the price charged by BT, with the added attraction of being able to share as much music as they want with other subscribers at no extra cost. Because there will be no restrictions on the format in which the traded music is encoded, users will be free to transfer songs to any type of digital music player, including the market leading Apple iPod, or burn them to CD." The Guardian (UK) 08/23/05
Posted: 08/22/2005 9:33 pm

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Arts Issues

Will Menlo Reinstate Arts Commission? Last year all seven members of the Menlo Park, California Arts Commission quit when the city decided to repeal its percent-for-art ordinance. Now a proposa; to reinstate the commission has drawn hesitation from the mayor. "Personally, I would love to see a huge number of commissions. But the amount of staff time devoted to a commission can be quite intense. If we reinstate the Arts Commission, we have to ask ourselves what it would displace." San Francisco Examiner 08/22/05
Posted: 08/22/2005 10:32 pm

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People

Robert Moog, 71 The synthesizer pioneer died of a brain tumor. "At the height of his synthesizer's popularity, when progressive rock bands like Yes, Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk, and Emerson, Lake and Palmer built their sounds around the assertive, bouncy, exotically wheezy and occasionally explosive timbres of Mr. Moog's instruments, his name (which rhymes with vogue) became so closely associated with electronic sound that it was often used generically, if incorrectly, to describe synthesizers of all kinds." The New York Times 08/22/05
Posted: 08/22/2005 8:06 pm

  • Who Was Robert Moog? Robert Moog was a tinkerer. "Moog was one of the pivotal pioneers of synthesised sound. His instruments transformed pop music during that most revolutionary and experimental of times, the 1960s." BBC 08/22/05
    Posted: 08/22/2005 8:01 pm

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Theatre

Shades Of Gray Monologist Spalding Gray has inspired a generation of solo artists paying homage. "The man who turned the most intimate details of his life into the stuff of brilliant solo storytelling becomes the haunting presence in the lives of a whole new generation of actor-writers. As it turns out, it's not all that easy to come to terms with an artist who inspired them (directly or indirectly) and then, at the age of 62, committed suicide." Chicago Sun-Times 08/23/05
Posted: 08/23/2005 7:18 am

Shakespeare - How "Authentic" Do You Want? "For 10 years, London's Globe, an obsessive facsimile overseen by Mark Rylance, has specialised in conjuring a theatrical time-warp. Its latest experimental project in the education of London's theatre audience is a staging in OP (original pronunciation) of Troilus, starring David Sturzaker and Rylance's daughter, Juliet, in the title roles. Some will complain that this is a pointless exercise in the pursuit of a will-o'-the-wisp - authenticity - that adds little to our understanding of Shakespeare. In practice, however, there's no loss of clarity in the switch from RP (received pronunciation) to OP, though it is momentarily disorienting." The Guardian (UK) 08/21/05
Posted: 08/23/2005 6:43 am

Shakespeare On The Range "Now in its 33rd year, Montana's Bozeman Shakespeare in the Parks theater company was created to bring free productions of such classics to rural, underserved communities that dot the northern Rockies. Since its creation in 1973, the company has traversed more than 250,000 miles of dirt and paved roads and performed before a cumulative audience of more than half a million people." Los Angeles Times 08/22/05
Posted: 08/22/2005 9:17 pm

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Publishing

Newsweeklies Fade At The Newsstand America's newsweeklies are losing single-copy newstand sales at an alarming rate. "The decreases again raise the question of how general-interest publications can hold on to their audiences in a 24-hour cable news and Internet environment while competing against increasingly popular entertainment, pop culture and specialized magazines." USAToday 08/22/05
Posted: 08/22/2005 10:10 pm

Library Closure = A Disturbing Turn For Culture Norman Lebrecht decries the closing of London's Whitechapel Library. "It illuminates the glaring failures of English education and integration over the past generation, and its transferral to an 'ideas store', half a mile away beside a Sainsbury's supermarket, says all you dreaded to know about the confusion of culture with consumerism that has overtaken the governing classes of this country with such devastating social consequences. Need to know cause and effect for street crime and drink culture? Start with the wrecking of our library system." La Scena Musicale 08/22/05
Posted: 08/22/2005 9:58 pm

Amazon Sells Short Stories Amazon has started selling short stories online for 49 cents. "The new program, called Amazon Shorts, is starting with 59 authors, which include well-known names such as Danielle Steel and Terry Brooks. Their submissions range in length from about 2,000 to 10,000 words, which the company expects to translate into an average about seven pages each. Customers who purchase a piece can read it on the Web, download and print a copy, save it in a digital locker, or send the story to an email address." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 08/22/05
Posted: 08/22/2005 8:57 pm

Online Library Swamped With interest The owner of a new online cooperative lending library says interest in the idea is overwhelming, and the website hasn't even started yet. "The website asks its members to add a list of 10 books they own to its online catalogue. The listed books can then be exchanged between members for the cost of postage and packing. Our community of readers can save money, have a bigger library and help the environment by saving a few more trees."
BBC 08/22/05
Posted: 08/22/2005 7:56 pm

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Media

CBC Bleeds Users During Lockout The CBC lockout is driving viewers and listeners to commercial competitors. Meanwhile, there are calls for the Canadian government to withhold public money from the broadcaster while the lockout continues. Toronto Star 08/23/05
Posted: 08/23/2005 8:17 am

Speak To Me -Celebs Discover Video Games "Until recently, most video game voices have been provided by hundreds of anonymous, journeyman actors. Celebrities used to turn up their noses at the idea of such work. But as the video game industry's earnings began to eclipse Hollywood's box office numbers -- the video game industry rang up more than $9.9 billion in North America in 2004 versus Hollywood's North American box office of $9.4 billion -- celebrity actors have been much more agreeable." Chicago Tribune 08/23/05
Posted: 08/23/2005 7:31 am

Americans Abandon TV This Summer "With the notable exception of ABC's "Dancing With the Stars" — by far the summer's biggest new hit, with an average of 16.8 million viewers — the six major broadcast networks have slogged through a disappointing summer, with household viewing down about 6% compared with the same period last year. Among the advertiser-friendly demographic of adults ages 18 to 49, the slide was even worse, off 10% according to figures from Nielsen Media Research." Los Angeles Times 08/23/05
Posted: 08/23/2005 6:59 am

May The Ringtone Be With You "Once limited to song samples and hip-hop clips, mobile phone ringers increasingly are featuring memorable movie quotes, including dialogue from titles as varied as "Napoleon Dynamite," "Office Space," "Without a Paddle" and "Meet the Fockers." Although the new trend may make customized cellphone ringers even more annoying than ever, they hold the promise of delivering new profits to the studios. Ring tones, as the personal ringers are called, have become a $3-billion worldwide boon for record labels, and Hollywood's studios and labor unions are now trying to figure out if the movie ring tone market is anywhere near that large." Los Angeles Times 08/23/05
Posted: 08/23/2005 6:54 am

Movie Studios Get The Word Out On Blogs Movie studios, looking for new places to advertise their wares, turn to blogs. "We looked for the places that sophisticated moviegoers seek out to find things that interest them. These are the people who are engaged with the world, who are informed about the big conspiracies going on out there." The New York Times 08/22/05
Posted: 08/22/2005 8:28 pm

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Dance

Times Reflected In fFIDA Toronto's fFIDA is the largest dance festival in Canada, and this year's edition provided a good overview of the dance scene. "The festival had some outstanding choreographies and dancers, but there was also a lot of blancmange. There seems to be quite of few groups of attractive dancers (mostly from Toronto, alas) who can't choreograph very well. Dance is always a sign of the times and there were very few funny works, and pitifully few political ones. The themes were mostly abstract, or navel-gazing, or angst-filled relationships, and a sharp edge was missing overall. Electronic music-cum-soundscape remains the score of choice, so any dance that actually used something melodic was a relief indeed." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 08/23/05
Posted: 08/23/2005 7:06 am

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