“When the enemy of literacy is imagined to be television or comic books, one can rightfully feel impatient with the kind of pro-book aphorism found on a tasseled bookmark. But what if the enemy is fire, or incendiary shells, or Nazism? In ‘Library: An Unquiet History, Matthew Battles shows that the history of libraries is the history of the destruction of books.”
Tag: 05.29.03
Birth Of The Blues (And So Much Else)
It’s amazing how much of American culture is traceable back to the blues. “Without the blues, we wouldn’t have jazz, rock, gospel, soul, R&B, country, or rap music – or even George Gershwin’s masterpiece, ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ (note the word “blue” in the title). The way we dance, dress, and speak, the music used to sell cars on TV – even our very concept of coolness – can be traced to the blues and its African roots.”
St. Paul Chamber Orchestra Renegotiates Its Future
The financially-struggling St. Paul Chamber Orchestra has negotiated a pay cut with its musicians. As well, “in a fundamental shift modeled by some European orchestras, the orchestra is transferring responsibility for core artistic decisions away from the artistic director and into the hands of a new ‘artistic vision committee’.”
Duopoly
More and more hit recordings are featuring more than one performer. “In 1993, not a single tandem recording appeared among the 25 top sellers in the U.S. Five years back, there was just one such record in the top 10, and five in the top 25. Last year, two of the top 10 and four of the top 25 were recorded by multiple artists.” Recently though, “at least 10 of the Top 25 have paired performers — five in the Top 10 and three in the Top 5.”
Turner Prize Shortlist Chosen
This year’s shortlisted artists for the Turner Prize have been selected. “The four nominees, all British artists under 50, include a transvestite who depicts himself involved in sex acts on the surface of his pottery vases.”
Canada Urges UK To Return Elgin Marbles
The Canadian parliament passes a resolution urging Britain to return the Elgin Marbles to Greece (Prime Mininister Jean Chretien, traveling in Athens, says he doesn’t know anything about the resolution when asked at a press conference).
Outdoor Ballet Screening Fizzles
In Sheffield, so few people came to a free outdoor screening of a performance of the Royal Ballet, that organizers could have bought each member tickets to the performance in London for what it cost for the screening. Organisers hoped that Monday evening’s performance would attract 20,000 people. “But the estimated audience was only 1,000 which, if correct, would mean that the performance subsided each member by nearly £30 – just a few pounds short of the cost of a seat in the stalls at the Royal Opera House to see the same ballet, Manon.”
Kaiser’s Prescription For Bad Times: Do More
The Kennedy Center’s Michael Kaiser says that in hard times arts organizations need to do more, not less. “When an organization has a little bit of a problem, it is the first reaction of the board and staff that tends to make the problem worse. Their natural reaction is to pull in and say, ‘We have to do less.’ Organizations get into a vicious cycle. They cut back a little bit on art and marketing. They get a little bit less revenue the next year, and they cut back a little more. And they have less. They have less, they have less, they have less.”
Video Games Help Develop Skills
A new study reports that players of video games develop better visual skills than non-players. “Experienced players of these games are 30 percent to 50 percent better than nonplayers at taking in everything that happens around them, according to the research, which appears today in the journal Nature. They identify objects in their peripheral vision, perceiving numerous objects without having to count them, switch attention rapidly and track many items at once. Nor are players simply faster at these tasks. First-person action games increase the brain’s capacity to spread attention over a wide range of events.
Dance Of The Hobbits
So what will a new “Lord of the Rings” look like? “A singing and dancing cast of 50, playing hobbits, elves, giant trees, wizards, monsters and the other main creatures of the author’s Middle Earth are due to take to the stage in spring 2005. ‘If Shakespeare can put all England on stage in Henry IV, I am confident we can put on the whole of Middle Earth’.”