“The theatre, in my opinion, has been hijacked a bit by literary departments of academia. It’s a live, aural tradition, much like rock ‘n’ roll is an aural tradition. One day rock ‘n’ roll will be hijacked by music departments of academia, and it will be like ‘this is the authentic version of ‘I Can’t Get No Satisfaction’ that has to be sung every time’.”
Tag: 04.29.11
Rocket Scientist Develops 3D Sound Recordings
“Unlike surround sound and other elaborate hardwiring, [Princeton physicist Edgar Choueiri’s] breakthrough consists of a software algorithm applied to sound files that allows stereo playback to sound much more real and lifelike. Imagine swatting at a fly buzzing 360 degrees around your head…”
Hundred Years Of Solitude To Get First (Legal) Edition In China
“A Chinese publisher is set to bring out the first ever authorised edition of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude in Chinese, after winning an auction for the rights with a fee reported to be in excess of $1m.” Pirated editions have been so common in China that an angry GGM vowed 20 years ago never to license the book there.
UK Library Budget Cuts Force Rethink Of What Libraries Are
The cuts “underscore a deeper confusion about what libraries are: what they do, who they serve, and – in an age where the notion of books itself seems mortally flawed – why we still need them. What’s the point of buildings filled with print? Isn’t all our wisdom electronic now? Shouldn’t libraries die at their appointed time, like workhouses and temperance halls?”
NY Bookstore Stocks Only One Title
“Andrew Kessler said he did not intend the month-long pop-up bookstore to be a profitable business so much as a cross between a marketing stunt and conversation piece at a time when many conventional bookstores and publishers are struggling.”
Clearwater Performing Arts Center CEO Steps Down
Robert Freedman has led the facility for 13 years. “Ruth Eckerd Hall has consistently been among the top 10 U.S. theaters for ticket sales and was nominated for theater of the year by Pollstar in 2005 and 2009. Billboard ranked the hall as the No. 1 grossing facility seating 2,500 or fewer for both the year and decade in 2010.”
Could Netflix Kill Movie Piracy?
“It doesn’t take a genius to conclude that Netflix’ popularity has a negative effect on the movie piracy rates in the US. Although no torrent site has gone out of business yet, Netflix certainly is a serious ‘competitor’ for access to movies.”
New Interest In The Classical Guitar (Why Now?)
“The two decades that saw the classical guitar thrive were decades of recession–the 1930s and the 1970s. Now, during another financial crisis, the classical guitar’s intimate strains seem again to be offering a spiritual succour in straitened times.”
Argentina Considers Giving Writers Pensions
The idea, inspired by similar initiatives in France and Spain, would offer the pension to those who are aged over 65 and have published at least five books or invested more than 20 years in “literary creation”.
Opera Needs A Makeover!
“Modern opera still sounds 19th-century, although it may not look it. One of the reasons why opera appears so radically a designer’s and director’s theatre today is because somewhere, somehow, the edifice needs a complete overhaul. The core of opera – the voice – seems not to have changed in hundreds of years.”