US Cities Say: Wi-Fi For All Hundreds of US cities are working on offering wi-fi internet service as basic city service. "A number of factors have come together to create this marriage of civic activism and a hot technology. First, there's the decreased cost of key wireless hardware and software components. Jupiter Research estimates that citywide systems will cost $150,000 per square mile for five years of operation. Neff puts it lower, though, saying her costs in Philadelphia were closer to $70,000-100,000 per square mile. Second, broadband penetration in the United States rose above 50 percent in fall 2004, for the first time, which introduced the concept of broadband as a critical service." MIT Technology Review 08/05
Posted: 08/30/2005 4:04 pm
A Placebo That Causes Physical Change The placebo effect has long fascinated researchers. A new study says that the placebo effect might not be all in your head. "The mere belief that they had received a pain killer was enough to release the brain's natural painkilling endorphins in the patients tested, scientists say." Christian Science Monitor 08/30/05
Posted: 08/30/2005 3:48 pm
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Cleveland Museum Set to Receive $90 Million in Bonding The Cleveland Museum of Art's massive $258 million expansion project could be financed in part by bonds issued by the city's Committee for Regional Economic Advancement, under a plan recommended by that body this week. The CREA, which also helped finance construction of the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame and the Cleveland Browns' football stadium, would float $90 million in bonds through the Cleveland port authority, and the museum would be responsible for repaying the loan as it receives money pledged by private donors for the expansion. The museum is stressing that it would not use its collection as collateral for the bonds. The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 08/31/05
Posted: 08/31/2005 6:51 am
Picasso's Pottery A collection of more than 100 pieces of pottery by Pablo Picasso will be sold at auction in London this fall. Included in the sale will be a famous Picasso earthenware vase called "Tripode," which is expected to fetch the highest price. BBC 08/31/05
Posted: 08/31/2005 5:39 am
Boston Considers Public Art Plan "Boston likes to call itself the Athens of America, with its world-renowned symphony and ballet, libraries, and intellectual might. But some officials in a city that has long claimed itself a cultural hotbed worry that Boston has fallen far behind other cities in its promotion of public art. Saying that dozens of other cities have set aside large funds for public art while Boston does little, City Councilor Michael Ross said he will propose today that the city require private developers to put 1 percent of their construction costs into a fund to finance public art around the city... [But] developers already face tough building restrictions and must set aside money for affordable housing and job training, [and] may not be eager to pay more." Boston Globe 08/31/05
Posted: 08/31/2005 5:28 am
Lascaux Cave Replica To Tour A replica of the Lascaux cave in which prehistoric art was discovered, is scheduled for a world tour. "The cave, discovered by teenagers 65 years ago, has been closed to general view since 1963 to protect its rock paintings of bison and other animals, some depicting successive stages of a hunt. The 17,000-year-old images are considered among the finest surviving examples of palaeolithic art and have been described as the Sistine Chapel of the prehistoric age." Sydney Morning Herald 08/30/05
Posted: 08/30/2005 4:53 pm
Women Artists Still have a Long Way To Go Despite great progress for women artists, the going has been slow. And how about that list of Britain's greatest art that didn't include work by a single woman? "It seems that women's art that doesn't conform to preconceived notions of feminine loveliness still has a hard time gaining acceptance. That means we can't be complacent about where women's art will stand for posterity, and how a list of favourite paintings will look in 50 years' time." The Guardian (UK) 08/30/05
Posted: 08/30/2005 4:24 pm
Aussie Aboriginal Painting Fails To Sell Aboriginal art now accounts for more than 50% of all art sales in Australia, and there were big expectations that a work by the late Rover Thomas, would become the first indigenous painting to sell for more than $1 million (Aus). Instead, the painting has failed to sell at auction. BBC 08/30/05
Posted: 08/30/2005 4:13 pm
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BYOH: The Latest In Personalizing The Concert Experience The strangest new trend in live concertgoing is all about pretending that you're actually alone. Rather than piling up walls of speakers to pump sound into a room, several music festivals have begun providing a bank of headphone jacks for people to plug in their personal ear gear, and the whole room rocks in what sounds to a non-participant like silence. "The idea of a live show experienced solely through headphones originated eight years ago in France when a Paris musician named Erik Minkkinen streamed a concert from his closet. As the story goes, three people in Japan tuned in. Despite the tiny audience, the idea evolved into a decentralized organization under the name le placard, or the closet, a kind of open-source music festival where anyone can establish a streaming and/or listening room." Wired 08/31/05
Posted: 08/31/2005 5:45 am
NJSO Negotiations Need More Time Contract negotiations with the musicians of the cash-strapped New Jersey Symphony are set to go into overtime tonight, when the current collective bargaining agreement expires. Both sides say negotiations are proceeding amicably, and there is no risk of a strike or a lockout. The NJSO musicians accepted a temporary pay cut in 2003, and are hoping to maintain their current salary of $44,975 under the new deal, even as they accept a role in bringing the organization back to fiscal stability. Newark Star-Ledger 08/31/05
Posted: 08/31/2005 5:16 am
Company Claims Patent On Part Of iPod Digital music device maker Creative says it owns a patent for a feature used by Apple in its popular iPod. "Creative said the patent covers the way music tracks are selected on a device using a hierarchy of three or more successive screens. On the iPod, for instance, users can scroll from artists to albums to songs. Creative ranks far behind Apple in the market. Apple dominates over 70 percent of sales for music players that use hard drives to store music." Yahoo! (Reuters) 08/30/05
Posted: 08/30/2005 5:55 pm
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Attention-Getter A new exhibit at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts has ostensibly been put together to show off the impressive collections of William I. Koch. But as it turns out, the collector himself is the real star of the show, his outsized personality dominating the art he has amassed over a lifetime of collecting. "Over the years, Koch has skippered an America's Cup winner, built a billion-dollar energy company, sued his family members, engaged in a high-profile court battle with his onetime mistress, and been arrested for allegedly beating his then-wife. (The charges were later dropped.) He's also built an art collection that has attracted the attention of countless museums." Boston Globe 08/31/05
Posted: 08/31/2005 6:18 am
China's Shining Star of the Avant-Garde Zhang Xiaogang is China's hottest painter, and as the country continues to walk the fine line between totalitarian regime and capitalist republic, his life has become increasingly complicated - and busy. "For years, his works - like those of other avant-garde artists of his generation - could not be exhibited in China, often because they were deemed too modern or politically questionable. But now his paintings are not only collected by wealthy Westerners and leading foreign museums, but they are also increasingly fashionable among well-to-do Chinese... few artists are as celebrated as Mr. Zhang, whose paintings can now fetch as much as $200,000 each." In fact, Zhang has been having trouble keeping up with the demand for his work. The New York Times 08/31/05
Posted: 08/31/2005 5:53 am
The Angel Who Saved Detroit's Jazz Festival When Gretchen Valade heard that Ford had pulled out as major sponsor of the 25-year-old Detroit Jazz festival, she stepped in to save the day. "The angel who saved the jazz festival has the bank account of a blue blood but the soul of an artist. She wrote short stories in her youth and standard-ballad pop songs as she got older, and when no one seemed interested in her music, she started her own record company. Valade's fortune is homegrown -- she's the granddaughter of the founder of Carhartt Inc., the $400-million Dearborn company that makes rugged work clothes that have also become hip urban fashion." Detroit Free Press 08/30/05
Posted: 08/30/2005 3:45 pm
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Broadway As A Transitional Tool Everyone knows why Broadway producers covet the addition of Hollywood stars to their shows: fame = box office. But why are so many stars equally keen to abandon their pampered L.A. lifestyles and outrageous film salaries for the cutthroat and (comparatively) low-paying world of Broadway? The answer usually lies in the murky world of PR: put simply, an actor needing an image overhaul can do a lot worse than establishing himself in what continues to be known as the "legitimate theatre." New York Post 08/31/05
Posted: 08/31/2005 6:44 am
LA Times Hires A Theatre Critic Three years after theatre critic Michael Phillips left the Los Angeles Times for the Chicago Tribune, the paper has hired a theatre critic. He's Charles McNulty, a senior editor at the Village Voice, who used to work for Variety. LA Observed 08/30/05
Posted: 08/30/2005 5:15 pm
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John Updike Considers Salman Rushdie: "Rushdie as a literary performer suffers, I think, from being not just an author but a cause célèbre and a free-speech martyr, thanks to the fatwa issued by Ayatollah Khomeini in the wake of “The Satanic Verses” (1988), a playful work that precipitated riots in India and Pakistan, and gave American and English publishers and booksellers an early taste of heightened security. The fatwa, which invited any good Muslim to kill Rushdie, was withdrawn in 1998, but a decade of living in hiding deepened this previously gregarious author’s expertise on two subjects: celebrity and human cruelty. His fascination with fame and theatricality, movies and rock music predated the fatwa, and gives his fiction a distracting glitter, like shaken tinsel." The New Yorker 08/29/05
Posted: 08/30/2005 5:22 pm
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Art-House Chain Goes Commercial Even as irritating and invasive pre-film ads become the norm in multiplexes across the country, art-house cinemas have mostly resisted the tug of money available from ad sales. But now, one of America's largest art-house chains, Landmark Theatres, has struck a deal with Ford Motor Company to "sponsor" a series of featurettes scheduled to run before certain films. "Starting in October, the theaters will present preshow "making of" featurettes, and interviews with directors, and the carmaker might even arrange to admit patrons for free." Ford is hoping the targeted approach will help it relaunch its Mercury line, and Landmark is hoping to avoid the acrimony garnered by more mainstream chains after the addition of ads to the theatregoing experience. Los Angeles Times 08/31/05
Posted: 08/31/2005 6:34 am
CBC Lockout Throwing Fall Schedule Into Question The three-week-old labor dispute at the CBC has thrown Canada's television production industry into a state of uncertainty, as everyone waits and wonders whether programs slated for the fall schedule will be allowed to air. "Some in the industry describe a great deal of confusion, with contradictory signals coming from CBC management itself, as it tries to continue with its fall programming as best as it can. It's a far cry from the usual publicity cycle. The buildup for new shows, fall specials and miniseries normally lasts six to eight weeks, as promos are created and aired, press interviews are arranged and print adds are plastered on billboards." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 08/31/05
Posted: 08/31/2005 6:26 am
Windfall For Rings Rights A producer who didn't work on The Lord of the Rings movies (which earned $2.9 billion) has earned $168 million from the project. "Saul Zaentz got the payout from film studio New Line because he bought the rights to JRR Tolkien's books in 1976. The windfall is revealed in court papers after New Line settled a legal wrangle with Mr Zaentz, Variety said. He sued New Line for a further $20m, saying they miscalculated the box office royalties he was owed." BBC 08/30/05
Posted: 08/30/2005 4:09 pm
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Labor Charges Against Washington Ballet A few months ago, Nikkia Parish was a valued member of the prestigious Washington Ballet, and had managed to land a few featured roles in the company's productions. These days, she is a bartender, having been dismissed for what the company says are "artistic reasons" after the spring season. Parish has a different view: she says she was fired for her union activism, and the National Labor Relations Board is looking into the charge. "Parish's story is not only about labor issues. It's about what a ballet company can demand of its dancers in the name of art. It's also about ballet culture, where typically the artistic director takes the role of the feared father figure and the dancers are the cowed children, afraid to speak up, used to the futility of protesting the myriad personal slights levied at them under the guise of artistic prerogative." Washington Post 08/31/05
Posted: 08/31/2005 7:00 am
"Cuban Nijinsky" Defects To US Rolando Sarabia, 23, one of the Ballet Nacional de Cuba's leading dancers, has defected to the US. "His departure, which was first reported by the Spanish newspaper El País, will be keenly felt in Cuba. Critics have called him the "Cuban Nijinsky" and compared him to the young Mikhail Baryshnikov. A company dancer since 1999, he has won ballet competitions in Paris; Varna, Bulgaria; and Jackson, Miss. Christened Sarabita by his many fans, Mr. Sarabia is the love object of at least half the adolescent balletomanes in Cuba, of which there are many. The New York Times 08/31/05
Posted: 08/30/2005 5:04 pm
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