Is A Rounder Soccer Ball A Better Soccer Ball? Adidas has spent millions trying to build a better, rounder soccer ball. "By reducing the number of places where panels touch each other, the ball reacts three times more accurately when kicked, according to Adidas, which tested the ball by having a robotic kicking machine whack it against a wall a few thousand times." The New York Times 06/05/06
Posted: 06/08/2006 7:26 am
Information As Commodity "The stuff you dig out of the earth’s crust becomes, in an information economy, less important than the information that informs it, what you think about the stuff. Yet the more you ponder that information, the more you understand about that stuff, the more real the stuff becomes. To put it in terms of the art world Andy Warhol lived in, the more you see that style matters more than substance, the more you see the vital role, the vitality, of substance." University of Chicago Press 06/06
Posted: 06/07/2006 9:27 pm
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Australians To Invetigate Aboriginal Art Biz The Australian government is launching an investigation into the business practices of selling Aboriginal art. "Once a $750,000 business in 1971, aboriginal art is now reputed to bring in at least $149 million. But many well-known aboriginal artists continue to live in third world conditions in remote communities, sometimes paid with a crate of beer or a used four-wheel drive, while their representatives are seen driving brand new Rolls Royces in downtown Sydney." Christian Science Monitor 06/07/06
Posted: 06/08/2006 8:13 am
Welcome To Temple-Land These days it isn't enough to open a temple and expect the people will follow. In Delhi the creators of a new temple has added a little Hollywood pizzaz. "The creators of the new Swaminarayan Akshardham temple complex that towers over east Delhi thought to include several features not commonly found in Hindu architecture, including an indoor boat ride, a large-format movie screen, a musical fountain and a hall of animatronic characters that may well remind us that, really, it's a small world after all. There are even pink (sandstone) elephants on parade." The New York Times 06/08/06
Posted: 06/08/2006 7:31 am
Where Architects Are Experimenting "Architects are living in one of those all-too-brief moments in which the world seems to be swimming with fat wallets — cities, Middle Eastern oil states, capitalist dictatorships — with the means and the egos to indulge in fantastical visions.Not in Britain, naturally. We prefer to get our visionary fantasies in the sale aisle at Matalan. No, it’s in China, of course, and Dubai, but also in culturally adventurous continental Europe, and even in the once architecturally cautious America, that experimentation is flourishing." The Times (UK) 06/07/06
Posted: 06/08/2006 12:28 am
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Will Wal-Mart Lift Parental Advisory Recordings Ban? Wal-Mart may be ending its ban on selling CDs with parental advisory stickers. The retailer is a major force in the recording business, but only sells "clean" versions of songs. "People seem to think that Wal-Mart is revisiting that decision. There are indications that the new regime is more open to change." Yahoo! (Reuters) 06/08/06
Posted: 06/08/2006 8:24 am
Osmo Vanska Quits Finnish Orchestra "After keeping a foot on each side of the Atlantic for a few years, the Minnesota Orchestra's music director will leave his post as chief conductor of Finland's Lahti Symphony at the end of the 2007-08 season, concluding a two-decade tenure that began when he was named the orchestra's music director in 1988." St. Paul Pioneer Press 06/08/06
Posted: 06/08/2006 7:56 am
Suggestion - National Symphony Should Book A Crowd The National Symphony has been looking for a replacement for music director Leonard Slatkin, but Mark Mobley has a suggestion. "The NSO needs a radical new strategy. It's time to diversify the product by hiring a series of guest conductors. Put more emerging musicians, especially more Americans, on the podium, and let the players and staff set a course to lure patrons and improve the concerts." Washington Post 06/04/06
Posted: 06/08/2006 7:44 am
A Controversial New Business Model For Trading Music A new website "allows fans to trade music discs for just $1 plus shipping, pledges to give a fifth of its sales to all the musicians, including lesser-known session studio players, involved in the making of CDs exchanged on its site. In a move that is certain to stoke controversy with music promoters, the founder of the Silicon Valley startup said la la will circumvent traditional copyright and royalty payment systems to compensate identifiable working musicians." Wired 06/07/06
Posted: 06/07/2006 9:54 pm
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Toronto's Opera, Ballet Companies - Good Neighbors? The National Ballet of Canada and the Canadian Opera Company will soon be sharing a new home. "Based on the experience of the almost three decades it has taken to move two national companies from the 3,200-seat Hummingbird (formerly O'Keefe) Centre to a new home, the two companies' relationship will continue to be as fraught as you'd expect between a robust, dynamic, operatic sort of character, flushed with pride because it has been the new building's prime mover, and a cautious, delicate, balletic character, toeing its way onto someone else's territory." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 06/08/06
Posted: 06/08/2006 8:36 am
Tijuana As Cultural Mecca? "From painting, conceptual art and photography to video and music, the city's artists now seem riveted not so much on border conflicts or a dream destination as on Tijuana itself: an experimental laboratory for people with hybrid identities and a growing global awareness." The New York Times 06/08/06
Posted: 06/07/2006 10:59 pm
For-Profit Arts Center Dumps Theatre Seattle's Capitol Hill Arts Center has sidestepped the traditional non-profit model to be a for-profit operation. But audiences haven't shown up for the center's theatre offerings, so CHAC is shutting them down. "Everything [we do] is really successful, except the theater season. If what we do is so important to the community, they have to come out. If the Seattle audience doesn't recognize Seattle value, the value will have to migrate elsewhere." Seattle Weekly 06/07/06
Posted: 06/07/2006 10:10 pm
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Jung On The Block An important collection of Carl Jung's papers is up for auction. "The collection shines a light on Jung's personal and professional preoccupations and includes material that has never been seen by researchers before. 'They have been seen by Jung scholars and they have been dumbstruck. Gobsmacked was one word that was used'." The Guardian (UK) 06/08/06
Posted: 06/07/2006 11:08 pm
A Critic On Board? Tyler Green reports that New York Times art critic Grace Glueck is on the board of the Berkshires' Clark Museum. "Would the Times allow its labor reporter to serve on the board of a labor union? Or could a Times science reporter sit on the board of the American Lung Association? What about its religion columnist: Would it allow him to serve on the board of a church, even if, say, he didn't write about that church? (Glueck last wrote about the Clark in 1991.)" Modern Art Notes (AJBlogs) 06/07/06
Posted: 06/07/2006 7:08 am
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Will Jerry Lewis "Nutty Professor" Musical Ever See The Light Of Day? "They have no composer or lyricist. Those are not minor details when you're putting on a musical. They also aren't announcing the name of the book writer(s) yet, which does not suggest Mr. Lewis is working with anyone with any experience at all in doing a musical. They hope to do a tryout at the Old Globe in San Diego in 2007 but apparently, no one's bothered to tell the Old Globe about this. It's a little late to be booking for '07, plus a brand-new musical by new people will probably need more outta-town tryouts than a few weeks in San Diego before it'll be Manhattan-ready." POVOnline 06/08/06
Posted: 06/08/2006 8:54 am
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What For Book Expo? "It's ridiculous, this pageant of the weird where everyone gets together to celebrate books by ritually destroying their bodies for a weekend and pretending that they're on a first-name basis with celebrities, but you cannot deny the fact that all of it, from the hundreds of lonely nights of nerdy solitude to the once-a-year chaos of BEA, is done out of love. Love for books. Well, books and free shit." The Stranger 06/08/06
Posted: 06/07/2006 10:24 pm
The Digi-Book, 2.0 Techies are taking another shot at making a digital book that someone might want to read a book on. Alex Beam is skeptical... Boston Globe 06/07/06
Posted: 06/07/2006 8:07 am
Canadian Book Buyers Angry About US Markup Canadian book buyers are grumbling because though the Canadian dollar has risen dramtically against the US dollar, they're still being charged a premiukm. "It's very conspicuous to people, so they have been murmuring their discontent. The breaking point came when the Canadian dollar hit 90 cents. The murmur turned into a crescendo. There is no beneficial exposure (to the strong dollar) on the part of booksellers; that windfall is going to someone else. But we are in the line of fire." Toronto Star 06/07/06
Posted: 06/07/2006 7:30 am
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Chinese Government Yanks Da Vinci Code China has pulled showings of "The Da Vinci Code." The movie, "which has been opposed by Christian groups because it suggests Jesus fathered children who continued his lineage, has made $13 million since its release on May 19. It was on its way to becoming one of the highest-earning foreign films in China." Miami Herald (AP) 06/08/06
Posted: 06/08/2006 8:18 am
House Republicans Propose major PBS Funding Cut "On a party-line vote, the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees health and education funding approved the cut to the budget for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which distributes money to the Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio. It would reduce the corporation's budget by 23 percent next year, to $380 million, in a cut that Republicans said was necessary to rein in government spending." Boston Globe 06/08/06
Posted: 06/08/2006 7:37 am
Power On The Move In Hollywood Two of Hollywood's biggest talent agencies are moving out of Hollywood. Okay, the move is only a mile away. "To the uninitiated, that may seem like a paltry distance. But for the agency world, which for a decade and a half has been clustered along a narrow corridor of power and information on Wilshire Boulevard here, it is the end of something, and the beginning of a more diffuse and more corporate existence." The New York Times 06/08/06
Posted: 06/07/2006 10:50 pm
Congress Boosts Indecency Fines The US Congress has hiked fines for "indecency" on TV networks. "The bill raising fines to $325,000 per violation, which Bush said he would sign, caps fines at $3 million for continuing violations. The U.S. House of Representatives approved the measure by a 379 to 35 vote on Wednesday, while the Senate passed the bill by unanimous consent last month." Yahoo! (Reuters) 06/07/06
Posted: 06/07/2006 9:32 pm
Portrait Of A Movie Critic "People wishing to make their mark as movie critics must either be able to express opinions like ours better than we can, or else they must be in charge of a big idea, preferably one that can be dignified by being called a theory." The New York Times 06/04/06
Posted: 06/07/2006 9:15 pm
Documenting Broadway In An Hour "Some 400 filmmakers spread out simultaneously along the thoroughfare for one hour Tuesday to capture every block of Broadway, which runs almost the entire length of Manhattan and a section of the Bronx." Backstage 06/07/06
Posted: 06/07/2006 9:00 pm
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Guillem Joins Sadler's Wells Star "ballerina Sylvie Guillem has been appointed associate artist at Sadler’s Wells by artistic director and chief executive Alistair Spalding. The dancer has been a guest principal at the Royal Ballet since 1988 and has appeared with companies such as the Paris Opera Ballet, the Kirov and La Scala." TheStage 06/08/06
Posted: 06/08/2006 8:45 am
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