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03-25-07
"guts" are serving as cognitive function
The idea that 'guts' literally serve some cognitive function isn't as far-fetched as it may seem. Some research has found that different visceral states (e.g. indigestion, heartburn) map on to specific brain areas associated with emotion. The relationship between the gastrointestinal system and the brain is particularly complex, but little research has explored whether there is a direct link between our physical 'guts' and our emotional responses.
A fascinating article by Dave Munger in Cognitive Daily
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03-25-07
the reason why the music on radio is so bad
Indie music is booming. But you won't hear much of it on radio. "The reasons for radio's resistance to independent music are numerous: laziness, knee-jerk conservatism, a tendency to equate small labels with musical inferiority, and, most crucially, the fact that over the last 40 years, FM radio programming slipped out of the control of actual music fans, and into the hands of careerist bean counters. A good article by Gilbert Garcia in The San Antonio Current.
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03-25-07
looted art in museums
At least 14 big U.S. museums are grappling over war-related art claims, in court or in quiet negotiations. The Metropolitan Museum in New York and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, among others, are locked in a stalemate with Ukrainian and Polish institutions claiming ownership to their Albrecht Dürer drawings. An heir to a German banker has laid claim to a 1500 landscape by Old Master Henri Met de Bles now at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, which the heir says the banker was forced to sell by Nazis. These cases may be the tip of the iceberg. A interesting article by Kelly Crow
in The Wall Street Journal.
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03-23-07
video game design as an art form
21st-century video-gamemakers represent the latest artistic genre deemed worthy of state patronage and support, the French government says .Earlier this month, French Culture Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres inducted three game designers into the prestigious Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Order of Arts and Literature) as chevaliers. An interesting article by Bruce Gain in Wired News.
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03-23-07
revival of figurative painters
In May 1961, some brash young figurative painters threw down the gauntlet to the modern art establishment. Today, several of those artists are still friends and still painting together, teaching a once-a-week figure painting class that has been going in some form since the late 1950s. And now, after years out in the cold, the Painting Group, as they call themselves, is having a modest comeback. A fascinating article by Kate Taylor in The New York Sun.
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03-23-07
see a play while sitting on the stage
Offering theatergoers a chance to be close to the action -- and producers a way to sell a few more tickets -- onstage seating turns up on Broadway about as often as a Sondheim revival. An fascinating article by Ben Sisario in The New York Times.
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03-22-07
superstores, an invasive species in city landscapes
Big superstores and chain retailers were allowed to spread by planners, town councils and governments in awe of big business. But then it started to go wrong. The chains became the economic equivalent of invasive species: hungry, indiscriminate, often antisocial and destructive. When no one was paying much attention, the superstores and cloned shops grew to dominate and suffocate the economic ecosystem.
An article by Andrew Simms in The Guardian.
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03-22-07
a brain injury can change your moral judgment
Damage to an area of the brain behind the forehead, inches behind the eyes, transforms the way people make moral judgments in life-or-death situations, scientists are reporting today. In a new study, people with this rare injury expressed increased willingness to kill or harm another person if doing so would save others' lives. A fascinating article by Benedict Carrey in The New York Times.
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03-22-07
art trashed by storage company
Last week, a court in London awarded 350,000 pounds ($685,248) in compensation and legal costs to Ofir Scheps, a Swiss collector who had deposited a sculpture by Anish Kapoor with a specialist storage company, Fine Arts Logistics.He had instructed the company to remove and take care of the work "Hole and Vessel''. It is the considered opinion of the general manager of Fine Arts Logistics that Hole and Vessel II was, by mistake, placed in a skip and destroyed at a waste transfer station. An interesting article by Martin Gayford in Bloomberg.com.
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03-21-07
a different take on dance photography
Dance photography may seem like a logical endeavor, but it represents an incompatible dichotomy: Dance is motion, photography is stillness. No matter how talented the photographer or how beautiful the dancers, the art forms are inherently at odds. A good article by Pia Catton in The New York Sun.
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03-21-07
the fantastic about writers' talks
What is it about a flesh-and-blood author that's so fascinating? Is it that, knowing (and loving) the works, we want to know the person behind them? Or is it less the writer per se than the writer as a biographical cipher - are we less interested in their lives for their own sake than for the literary "clues" that their various histories (and, in talks, off-the-cuff remarks) might impart? An interesting article by Eloise Millar in The Guardian.
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03-21-07
the link between rembrandt and picasso
In April, 1973, the month that Picasso died, he was asked to choose an image to be used as a poster for a show in Avignon. He picked “The Young Painter,” an oil sketch he’d done a year earlier,a vision of his dewy beginnings, not his bitter end. The apple-cheeked youth recalls another young painter at the outset of his career, the twenty-three-year-old Rembrandt, picturing himself and his calling around 1629. The captured moment, in both images, is solemn; the young men pause before their work, brushes in hand, as if locked in a creative trance. A raking light, the illumination of an idea, strikes their faces. “I don’t paint what I see,” Picasso was given to saying. “I paint what I know.” Rembrandt, his picture tells us, felt the same way: the mind instructing the hand. A great article by Simon Schama in The New Yorker.
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03-20-07
roof implodes at alberta art gallery
Monday morning had gone as planned, the Prairie Art Gallery would have been "filled with visitors, staff and a pre-school class filled with 20 children. But early in the morning, curator Robert Steven noticed one of the central roof beams had cracked and water was trickling into the south end of the building. ... It was moments after city workers left the building after checking out what was going on that a third of the roof sagged and smashed to the floor."
A good article in The Global and Mail.
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03-20-07
if you are a musician you will learn chinese easier
Anyone who has tried to learn Chinese can attest to how hard it is to master the tones required to speak and understand it. And anyone who has tried to learn to play the violin or other instruments can report similar challenges. Now researchers have found that people with musical training have an easier time learning Chinese because both skills draw on parts of the brain that help people detect changes in pitch.
An interesting article by Eric Nagourney in The New York Times.
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03-20-07
iraqs orchestra tries to keep playing
They are challenging the situation by trying to not be too far from the public.They are trying to put on a concert every month, but circumstances are very difficult. So the performances that the orchestra do put on are private and rarefied, little events for a small audience who do not have to travel very far or have their own security, and put on mainly at the city's two subscription - only 'country clubs'.
An fascinating article by Peter Beaumont in The Guardian.
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03-19-07
is internet radio going to be a memory of the past ?
A new ruling from the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board threatens to silence many, and perhaps most, webcasters. The Royalty Board's decision to more than double the fees that webcasters pay to play recorded music might seem unfair to mom-and-pop Web radio operators -- and to many of Web radio's 50 million listeners -- but it's about time artists got their share of the money that radio rakes in. An interesting article in The Washington Post.
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03-19-07
2007 a good year for writer-directors
Almost since the beginning of Hollywood, writers have written themselves into becoming directors -- the long list includes Billy Wilder, Barry Levinson and Oliver Stone. What's changed is the number of opportunities available in the form of billionaires and quasi-billionaires eager to take a chance on proven names who want to direct. Indeed, almost everyone listed above -- even those such as Frank and August, whose films earned billions for the studios -- was financed independently.
An article by Rachel Abramowitz in The New York Times.
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03-19-07
the science of conciousness
Physicists believe that the theory of everything is hovering right around the corner, and yet consciousness is still largely a mystery, and physicists have no idea how to explain its existence from physical laws. The questions physicists long to ask about nature are bound up with the problem of consciousness. Physics can furnish no answers for them.
A good article in The American Scholar.
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03-15-07
summer movie sale
"A frayed relationship between the major studios and exhibitors, cost-cutting across the board and consolidation among the national theater chains has turned a promotional event for big-budget movies into one that is not promoting very many big-budget movies." Reports The New York Times.
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03-15-07
want to sell more books? make sure they're low-brow
This weeks Guardian Online reports ""HMV is planning to close up to 30 of its Waterstone's book shops, give more space to higher margin items and reduce the number of high brow books, as part of an overhaul to restore the fortunes of the struggling business."
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03-14-07
iranian anger and protests at '300' movie
"Iranians were clearly offended at the way their ancestors were portrayed in the film, inspired by the tale of 300 Spartans under King Leonidas who held out at Thermopylae against a Persian invasion led by Xerxes in 480 B.C. The government, lawmakers and Iranian Web logs (blogs) denounced the movie, which depicts the huge Persian army as ruthless but repeatedly outsmarted by the Greeks who are only defeated in the end by treachery." Reports Yahoo News.
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03-14-07
Is there something wrong with French culture? The NY Times says 'yes'.
The NY Times this week asks if French culture has lost its relevance. Pointing out that 'The French art scene has lost its buzz' Alan Riding of the Times details that the nation's creators are generally 'out of touch with society' left with little to say in this troubled world. Read this fascinating article in this weeks NY Times Online
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03-12-07
what's inside your head could be illegal
Proponents of neurolaw say that neuroscientific evidence will have a large impact not only on questions of guilt and punishment but also on the detection of lies and hidden bias, and on the prediction of future criminal behavior. At the same time, skeptics fear that the use of brain-scanning technology as a kind of super mind-reading device will threaten our privacy and mental freedom, leading some to call for the legal system to respond with a new concept of cognitive liberty. An article by Jeffrey Rosen in The New York Times.
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03-12-07
energetic perfection for the planet
In this perfect system, each unit of energy consumed would be somehow offset. Every industrial byproduct would reassemble into something useful and benign. Every beam of sunlight, scrap of garbage, and flush of the toilet would be pressed into service. No exceptions. Humankind would make obsolete the very concept of waste. An article by Jessica Winter in The Boston Globe.
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03-11-07
lagerfeld: better late than never
Fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld has given in to reality, creating a line of clothes based on the things people really wear -- t-shirts and jeans. He says they are "the basis of modern dressing." His jeans and tees have been created together with Maurice Ohayon, the jean designer. It's about time that haute couture gives way to street life.
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03-11-07
mit students are working on new ways to harvest solar power
Their inspiration is to steal a page from Mama Nature. If anyone has figured out how to optimize the problem of converting sunlight into usable energy better than she, they must have had more than the few billion years of evolutionary optimizing that's today working on her behalf.
"We want to use algae as a solar collector," said Craven (pictured here by his zeroth-gen solar panel). "Nobody's researching this right now, and it has the most potential of any (solar technology)."
An article in Wierd news.
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03-11-07
the relation between art and corporations
The old days are gone of business sponsorship, where the corporation wrote a large cheque in return for access to the royal box or the corporate name on a poster. Company shareholders are much more demanding than they once were about corporate spend; those working in these enterprises also want more from the relationships with arts organisations than a night at the opera. The ethos of corporate social responsibility means businesses want to see their contribution make a difference to the wider community as well as the quality of the arts. An article by Helena Kennedy in The Guardian.
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03-09-07
rap on the downside?
The turning point is hard to pinpoint. But after 30 years of growing popularity, rap music is now struggling with an alarming sales decline and growing criticism from within about the culture's negative effect on society.Rap sales slid a whopping 21 percent from 2005 to 2006, and for the first time in 12 years no rap album was among the top 10 sellers of the year. Read all the story on cnn.com.
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03-08-07
tea served by a robot
Japan is pretty serious about robotics. If the droids are going to fit in, they probably need to learn the Japanese custom of serving tea.Fortunately, researchers at the University of Tokyo are exploring just that. In a demonstration this week, a humanoid with camera eyes made by Kawada Industries Inc. poured tea from a bottle into a cup. Read all about it on cnn.com.
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03-08-07
captain america assasinated
Captain America is dead. The legendary superhero is shot to death outside a courtroom in the latest issue of his comic, as part of a larger storyline about a government ban on superhero vigilantism. The hero's adventures have been published by Marvel Comics since 1941. An article by George Gene Gustines in The New York Times.
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03-08-07
bionic art
The relatively new field of bio-art, in which practitioners "use live tissues, bacteria, living organisms and life processes to create works of art that blur the traditional distinctions between science and art," is growing in popularity and visibility. But some animal rights activists object strongly to the genre, which they consider exploitation. An article by Jessica M. Pasko in The Chicago Tribune.
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03-07-07
publishing increased since the boom of the internet
"Power to the People" was a 1960s slogan embraced by the electronic visionaries of the 1970s, who heralded a new era of universal communication and access to knowledge. Thirty years after the birth of the personal computer and more than a decade after Netscape launched the World Wide Web as we know it, their goals seem within reach, if not already achieved. Yet there is a catch. An article by Edward Tenner in The Chronicle of Higher Education.
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03-07-07
plunder of iraqs archeological sites to fund insurgency
With the situation in Iraq growing seemingly graver by the day, Americans are increasingly reluctant to risk American blood to save Iraqi lives. So it’s a pretty tough sell to ask people to care about a bunch of old rocks with funny writing. But what if they understood that the plunder of Iraq’s 10,000 poorly guarded archaeological sites not only deprives future generations of incomparable works of art, but also finances the insurgents?An article by Matthew Bogdanos in The New York Times.
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03-07-07
digital information piles up
In a new study that estimates how much digital information is zipping around finds that for the first time, there's not enough storage space to hold it all.Add it all up and IDC determined that the world generated 161 billion gigabytes - 161 exabytes - of digital information last year. That's like 12 stacks of books that each reach from the Earth to the sun.Good thing we delete some stuff.An article by Brian Bergstein in Wired magazine.
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03-07-07
russian theater says no to cell phones
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03-06-07
tv networks attempt to emulate YouTube model
As viewer-created content begins to rule the most popular websites, various TV networks are attempting to bridge the gap between themselves and the online world by fusing their programming with Web style broadcasts, such as Nickelodeon and 'ME:TV' in which childrens self made segments are incorporated. Jake Coyle of Yahoo probes the question "How well can TV play the Web's game?". The full story can be found on Yahoo News.
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03-06-07
foreign film US struggle
Despite the recent celebrations surrounding the success of foreign movies in Hollywood, the reality is that in fact many foreign filmmakers, who are successful outside America are still experiencing great difficulty getting their films distributed in the US. Read more about this at LA Times Online.
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03-05-07
remember MP3's?
Remember the arguments about the difference in sound quality between vinyl, tape, and CD? Well there back except this time it's the MP3 versus higher quality lossless-encoded sound recordings. Read more about format developments in the full story from Wired News Online.
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03-05-07
controversy surrounds christie auction
Despite netting almost $17 million, a recent Christie's auction had aroused much controversy owing to the fact that the seller, Swiss art dealer Pierre Huber, had originally amassed the collection detailing that the works will be placed in a museum, and as such acquired many of the pieces at much lower prices than usual. More about the lies and deceit can be found in The New York Sun Online.
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03-03-07
classical music market moves to downloads
Major orchestras, with or without major labels sometimes without any label are releasing their music as downloads, and audiences are buying.
When the New York Philharmonic announced last year that it was going to begin offering concerts as downloads, it was hard to tell how significant a move this would be. One year into its downloading venture, the Philharmonic is certainly portraying it, if not in Technicolor, then in rosy hues. The orchestra’s first release last March, of the last three Mozart symphonies, hit iTunes’s best-seller charts. An article by Anne Midgette in The New York Times.
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