Much of the history of the world has been the story of struggle against the powers that be, a fight for independence. But artists can no longer delude themselves into thinking they are independent – at least not if they want to be successful. “She and he calculate, measure and double-guess their art’s compatibility with the rigid rules of the distribution of art, which dictate that art should be packaged in novelty and product-recognition or name-recognition, regardless of the esthetics or ideology represented in it…”
Tag: 01.03
Clamping Down On Free Speech
How does the Digital Millennium Copyright Act threaten freedom of expression? “The DMCA gives corporations the power to essentially purge from the Internet what they deem to be copyright and trademark violations, usually by forcing Internet service providers to remove offending Web sites. The act encourages such behavior because the law states that ISPs and Web host companies can avoid liability only if they comply with copyright owners’ demands to quickly remove so-called infringing materials. Search engines are also liable under the law for simply pointing users to Web sites, though they too can avoid lawsuits if they cave to the demands of overzealous copyright owners by removing certain search results. Intellectual property owners can simply make your voice disappear if they do not like what you have to say about them—whether you are liberal, conservative or neither. This is something that was much more difficult in a non-digital world.”
How Do We Perceive Art?
“One of the hottest topics of academic inquiry in recent years has been the relationship between art and cognition. This interest is a natural outgrowth of the cognitive revolution that began in the early 1960s, producing a growing body of knowledge about cognitive processes. Little of value is likely to come of all this ferment, however, without a fundamental reassessment of what exactly is meant by the key term, art, in relation to cognition. Scholars must begin by asking themselves whether that term can coherently encompass all the modernist and postmodernist innovations of the past hundred years.”
Doubts About The Music Industry’s Survival
“This year could determine whether the music business as we know it survives. In the first six months of 2002, CD sales fell 11 percent – on top of a 3 percent decline the year before. Sales of blank CDs jumped 40 percent last year, while the users of Kazaa, the biggest online file-trading service, tripled in number. As recently as 10 years ago, the media conglomerates that own record labels regarded them as cash cows – smaller than Hollywood but more reliably profitable. Now all five major labels are either losing money or barely in the black, and the industry’s decline is turning into a plunge.”
The Solo Cartoonist
Created in the traditional way, a cartoon takes teams of artists and years of work. Produced at a digital animation studio like Pixar, it takes banks of advanced computers and $100 million give-or-take for a full-length feature. Andy Murdock is creating his cartoon feature on home computer equipment, doing all the animation himself. “Even five years ago, it would have been hard to imagine an animator, working alone in his studio, making a 3-D feature. But fast computers and software like 3D Studio Max, Maya and SoftImage are making high-quality animation more of a do-it-yourself process.” And Murdock is showing his work-in-progress at this year’s Sundance Online Film Festival. Take a look.
When Van Gogh Met Gauguin
An interactive website put up by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam traces the interactions between Van Gogh and Gauguin. Attaching colors to sounds, allowing the viewer to change the color palette of the website, and linking pictures to paintings, the site explores the artists’ lives and work.
Putting The NY Public Library On The Web
The New York Public Library is testing a database that will put images of much of its collection online. “At its inception, the Image Gate database contains approximately 80,000 images spanning a wide range of subjects. This number will grow as The Library digitizes more images; this phased rollout will end in 2004, when the site will include more than 600,000 images.”
Big Greed Over A Lovable Bear
Winnie the Pooh earns about a billion dollars a year for Disney – about the same as Micky Mouse. But the lovable bear “would no doubt scratch his fluff-stuffed head in disbelief at what’s going on” with the rights to his likeness and stories. But the family that acquired rights from Pooh creator AA Milne in 1930, is “embroiled in an epic legal battle with the Walt Disney Co. over the merchandising rights to the world’s most beloved bear.” The family “accuses Disney of cheating it out of royalties for nearly two decades” and want their contract with Disney voided so “they can shop Pooh around to competing entertainment companies. Disney vigorously disputes the allegations.”
Exploring The Architecture Of Music
“Since music is the only one of the arts that is designed for the ears rather than the eyes, we sometimes tend to forget that it is part of the corporeal world, since our sense of reality is so eye-driven. However, all sound must emanate from somewhere, which makes the notion of space in music the most down-to-earth of all of the components that go into the making of music. Thinking of music without acknowledging its spatial possibilities is sort of like the study of plane geometry. You can learn a lot of formulas and neat shapes, but the real world is 3D!”
In Search Of The Center Of Music
“New music right now — and in fact, or so I’m thinking, most likely the entire music world—is best described with the old story of the blind people and the elephant. You know the drill. The blind people approach the noble beast. One touches its tail. “This is a rope,” he says. The next one reaches out a hand, and finds the elephant’s trunk. ‘It’s not a rope,’ she says. ‘It’s a snake!’ And so on, till they’re lost in confusion.”