As Google introduces its new mobile phone, the company is also developing “a system where instead of always connecting to one network, a phone, laptop or other wireless device invites all available networks to bid for your business.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Wheeldon Company Makes Good Back Home in London
“What a difference a year makes! When Christopher Wheeldon brought his new company Morphoses to Sadlers Wells last year, I complained that the programme was monochrome and prim – a poor advertisement for so exciting a venture. Wednesday’s bill was exactly the opposite: full of life, intelligence and promise for the future.”
The Medium Is the Message
“A well-known British artist is exhibiting collage portraits of President Bush and Paris Hilton he made out of porn magazine images.” (And who bought the Paris collage? None other than Damien Hirst.)
The Last Word in Senior Fashion?
“One after the other, the models strutted across the stage to bouncy ’80s dance tunes, all showing off designs of the same article of clothing – adult diapers. Japan has one of the world’s most rapidly aging societies, and the fashion show Thursday proved the country’s diaper producers are intent on keeping the elderly clean and dry.”
Chandelier Returns to Philadelphia’s Academy of Music
(And It’s Gorgeous)
The crystal-laden fixture, dating back to the opera house’s opening in 1857, is blazing once again following a 13-month, $1.7 million project to restore its original appearance.
Revisiting Yousuf Karsh at 100 (And Not Liking What You See)
Mark Feeney has a contrary take on the legendary portrait photographer:
“Karsh’s very real if amorphous achievement belongs not to the world of art but celebrity. He wasn’t so much a photographer as a brand name. Karsh of Ottawa was a label on a conspicuously worn luxury good.”
Russian Censors Clear Simpsons, South Park
“A Russian adult cartoon TV channel that had been threatened with losing its frequency after religious groups complained that episodes of South Park and other toons incited religious and national hatred, earned a reprieve late Wednesday. But authorities have asked it to review its content.”
Damien Hirst and Sotheby’s Achieve New Horizons in Synergy
“Three weeks after Damien Hirst’s £111.5 million ($206 million) auction at Sotheby’s, the artist will open a shop next door to the auction house in London.”
Why Boston Ended Up with So Many Monets
“If you put aside the city’s early grounding in Barbizon painting, it’s hard to say why Boston should have been such fertile ground for impressionism. But early critics were quick to make links between the ‘pure eye’ of Monet and a term coined by Ralph Waldo Emerson: the ‘transparent eyeball’.”
The Pentagon 9/11 Memorial – Does It Work?
“Moving as the ensemble is, the overall effect is also oddly unresolved, almost nihilistic. ‘This happened,’ the memorial seems to say. ‘We don’t know why, and we don’t know what it means.'”