Tuesday, March 28
The Woman With The Perfect Memory A woman named AJ remembers everything that ever happened to her. Everything. "Give her any date, she said, and she could recall the day of the week, usually what the weather was like on that day, personal details of her life at that time, and major news events that occurred on that date." ABCNews 03/27/06
Posted: 03/28/2006 7:02 am
Brain Game That Makes You Smarter "Next month, Nintendo is releasing Brain Age, a DS game based on the research of the Japanese neuroscientist Ryuta Kawashima. Kawashima found that if you measured the brain activity of someone who was concentrating on a single, complex task -- like studying quantum theory -- several parts of that person's brain would light up. But if you asked them to answer a rapid-fire slew of tiny, simple problems -- like basic math questions -- her or his brain would light up everywhere." Wired 03/27/06
Posted: 03/27/2006 10:46 pm
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Gehry On A Broach Architect Frank Gehry unveils a new line of jewelry for Tiffany. "The 76-year-old architect, who reached a whole new level of fame on the silvery sails of Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Guggenheim Bilbao, is the first new artist to be introduced by Tiffany since Paloma Picasso in 1980. The collection is comprised of six series named after recurring motifs in Gehry's work: Fish, Torque, Axis, Fold, Equus and Orchid." Los Angeles Times 03/28/06
Posted: 03/28/2006 8:26 am
Berlin Biennial: A Story To Tell The Berlin Biennial is not just another mix-and-match show. "Flawed and frequently jarring it may be, but this is an important, timely exhibition. This is no survey show, no feebly themed free-for-all. It is not just another biennial. The curators have attempted to construct if not a narrative, then a journey." The Guardian (UK) 03/28/06
Posted: 03/27/2006 11:32 pm
British Museum's MIA List The British Museum says that more than 2000 items are missing from its collection and that 28 items have been stolen in recent years. "While the thefts represent a tiny fraction of the 150 million items in the library's possession, the stolen items are valued at £100,000, with a number of rare maps and illustrated plates ripped from antique books by international thieves. A single plate cut from a 1522 volume on Pompeii is worth £45,000." The Guardian (UK) 03/27/06
Posted: 03/27/2006 11:28 pm
After The Eye (Then What?) David Marks and Julia Barfield spent years getting the London Eye built. It's become a modern landmark icon. So what do you do as a followup? There is that problem of being typecast... The Guardian (UK) 03/27/06
Posted: 03/27/2006 11:17 pm
British Museum's New Global Role “Until five or 10 years ago, almost all exhibitions took place in quite a small circuit of museums, in Europe and the US, and perhaps Japan and Korea. Now that has changed quite profoundly. We can take the collection to Africa, to China, and they can use it as they want, because in each case it has a different public to address, and a different story to tell.” Financial Times 03/27/06
Posted: 03/27/2006 11:04 pm
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Cardiff "Ring" Sells Out In Four Hours Tickets for the Kirov Opera's production of Wagner's Ring in Cardiff, Wales, went fast. "Cardiff Fans from across the world have bought seats costing as much as £750 for the performance by Russia's Mariinsky Theatre - formerly the Kirov Opera. The shows in December will be their only planned UK performance. Tickets have gone to fans as far away as Russia itself, as well as the USA, the Middle East and France." BBC 03/28/06
Posted: 03/28/2006 8:39 am
Where Are Opera's Black Leading Men? One sight that remains exceedingly rare in opera?: a black tenor in a leading role from the standard repertoire. That could be changing, though. Black tenors are becoming more and more visible... Baltimore Sun 03/28/06
Posted: 03/28/2006 8:35 am
Conducting In The Highest City On Earth (And Dodging Dynamite) David Handel has been rebuilding the Bolivian national Orchestra. He has "increased the number of performances to 50 a year from 12, recorded the group for the first time, enlarged the symphony to 65 musicians from 40, raised salaries and increased the yearly budget to $1 million from $100,000. He also has lowered ticket prices for students and raised the number of season ticket holders to 1,000 from none. Finally, he found the group its first-ever home in a one-time vaudeville theater and has taken the symphony to locales where it never had performed." Now if only the bombs would stop going off outside the concert hall... The Forward 03/24/06
Posted: 03/28/2006 6:51 am
Will Digital Downloads Save Classical Music? "Proportionately, classical sells better digitally than on CD. Whereas classical accounts for about 3%-4% of total sales of music in shops, on iTunes it accounts for 12% of sales..." The Guardian (UK) 03/27/06
Posted: 03/27/2006 11:22 pm
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Orange County PAC Embezzler Sentenced A former accounting employee at the Orange County Performing Arts Center has been sentenced to ten years in prison after admitting she embezzled $1.85 million from the center. She "started working at the center in 1995 and from September 2000 to September 2005 pocketed cash that was supposed to be deposited into bank accounts. She then created false records to show that the money had been deposited, prosecutors said. She was ordered to pay back the money, plus 10 percent interest." Orange County Register 03/27/06
Posted: 03/28/2006 12:44 am
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Scottish Sculptor Hamilton Finlay, 80 Known as the grand old man of Scottish Art, he first came to Scotland as a child to attend boarding school, but his education was interrupted by the Second World War and he was evacuated to Orkney. After the war, he worked as a shepherd, studied philosophy and began to write stories and plays, many of which were broadcast on the BBC." BBC 03/28/06
Posted: 03/27/2006 8:17 pm
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Vigilante Broadway Audience Takes On... The Rude Audience No question audience members are getting ruder and ruder in the theatre. On Broadway recently there has been a rash of vigilante actions against the transgressions of annoying audience members. One psychologist describes the situation as "an epidemic breakdown of boundaries. People have completely lost sight of what personal boundaries are."
New York Daily News 03/28/06
Posted: 03/28/2006 7:52 am
87-Year Run Almost Comes To End Over Unpaid Bills For 87 years, Veronica's Veil Players have annually staged "America's Passion Play." "That long run was nearly broken this weekend, with the gas supply to the group's ancient furnace cut off because of nearly $40,000 in unpaid bills. Friday's performance went on using space heaters, but about two dozen audience members left early. The Players' board decided to cancel the remaining four performances, through next weekend, and to re-mount June 2-11, when any remaining cold in the building will function, Szemanski joked, "like free air conditioning." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 03/28/06
Posted: 03/28/2006 7:40 am
Broadway Gets Back To Pre-9/11 Box Office "During the 2004/5 season, 1,302,590 international visitors attended a Broadway show. That total is on a par with figures for 1999-2000 of 1,320,617. It marks a significant improvement on figures from 2000/1 to 2003/4, which were 1,106,284, 525,834, 651,093 and 1,241,786, respectively. Additionally, internet purchases of theatre tickets have drastically increased over the last five years, with 29% of those surveyed mentioned that as the preferred method of purchase, up from 7% in 1999-2000." The Stage 03/27/06
Posted: 03/28/2006 12:41 am
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The Most Powerful Woman In British Publishing As co-director of Cactus Television, Amanda Ross is described as "the most powerful woman in British publishing. All the other reasons can be summarised in two names and three words: Richard and Judy." The Scotsman 03/27/06
Posted: 03/28/2006 6:58 am
Da Vinci Code Hype (Get Ready) The book seems like a license to print money. "It certainly has meant 'print more books.' Now it also means "print movie tickets, paperbacks, store displays, posters." Think of a tickertape parade with all that paper raining down: Dan Brown's controversial thriller about a murdered art curator and a centuries-old Vatican conspiracy is going to generate heaps of paper in the next two months. And a lot of it will be green." Dallas Morning News 03/27/06
Posted: 03/28/2006 12:32 am
The Mystery Of Da Vinci Code's Success On the eve of the release of the Da Vinci Code in paperback, Julia Keller wonders: "why is "The Da Vinci Code" such a hit? What accounts for its sensational success?" Chicago Tribune 03/27/06
Posted: 03/28/2006 12:30 am
French Catch The Writing Bug French publishers are drowning under a sea of unsolicited manuscripts. "With the short 35-hour working week in France and a fall in the average retirement, increasing numbers of French men and women are turning pen to paper to write 'their book'. Most, some 75 percent, write novels loosely based on their own experiences, turning the editor into a kind of shrink, an often unwilling confidante party to the author's deepest secrets, fears and desires." Yahoo! (AFP) 03/27/06
Posted: 03/27/2006 10:40 pm
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Key To Success? Technology Is Your Friend This is not the first time the movie business has been threatened by technology. "In the 1950s, as today, theaters were under siege, their audience being lured away by a dazzling new technology. Today's competition comes from the Internet, computer games and home entertainment centers. Then the enemy was television. "How do you compete with free?" theater owners moaned, the same mantra we've heard from record executives complaining about unauthorized file sharing. My response has always been the same: You've got to embrace the future." Los Angeles Times 03/28/06
Posted: 03/28/2006 7:25 am
French TV Gets Colorful? French TV has its first black news reader. "So are France’s mainstream channels becoming more, well, colourful? Up to a point. 'It’s a step forward but there’s still a huge gap between the reality of French society and how it’s represented on television'.” Financial Times 03/27/06
Posted: 03/27/2006 11:08 pm
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Washington Ballet - Smaller, But Back In Business It's labor contract resolved and its budget reduced, Washington Ballet announces a new pared-down season. "A long-running labor dispute forced the cancellation of nearly half of December's run of 'The Nutcracker,' which the ballet company said resulted in a substantial loss of ticket revenue that in turn led to the scrapping of other scheduled performances and the laying off of the dancers. A tentative agreement on a first-ever employment contract with the American Guild of Musical Artists, the dancers' union, was reached this month. With the ballet back in business, we've made a decision to invest in the artistic product." Washington Post 03/28/06
Posted: 03/28/2006 7:33 am
Ballet Meets West African Cincinnati Ballet is learning African dance. "Essentially, ballet is an attempt to reject gravity. Almost everything a ballet dancer does is trying to deny the existence of it. Leaps, pirouettes - even pointe shoes themselves. They're about giving an appearance of weightlessness. In much African dance gravity is an ally, a force to work with, not against." Cincinnati Enquirer 03/27/06
Posted: 03/27/2006 11:56 pm
A New Era For Dance Umbrella? London's Dance Umbrella is 25 years old, and now founder Val Bourne is close to retirement. "Not since Ninette de Valois founded the Royal Ballet has a British dance institution been so intimately identified with a single individual. From the early shoestring days to Umbrella's current high profile, it has been Bourne's own tastes that have governed the festival's programming. It was Bourne who nurtured the London careers of American choreographers such as Trisha Brown and Morris, and Bourne who doggedly supported native talent such as Michael Clark." The Guardian (UK) 03/28/06
Posted: 03/27/2006 11:40 pm
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