“Talks on an international treaty updating broadcast rights to accommodate the Internet failed Friday because countries were unable to agree how much legal and technological protection to afford broadcasters.”
Tag: 06.22.07
Fame And Fortune In TV Commercials
“During the height of the rock era, if one of your songs was used in a TV commercial, your career was on the way out. And after the late ’60s, hit singles weren’t even cool again until the ’80s. But now the opposite is almost true. If you don’t have a song in a TV commercial your career is over. I’m exaggerating slightly but you get the point.”
It’s Here – On Demand, The Future Of Publishing?
The New York Public Library is demonstrating a 1,600-pound machine hooked up to the internet that will print any of 200,000 public-domain books on demand in six to eight minutes.
Will YouTube Create A Golden Age For Dance?
“Whatever repercussions the rise of online video has for music and the music business, it’s doing wonders for dancers. One can’t help but suspect that we are entering a new dance craze golden age, in which the emphasis will be laid firmly on the dancing in dance music. Regional steps and styles, zapped across the world via the internet, will compete for global predominance.”
Exiled Pakistani PM: Rushdie Attacker Should Be Out
Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has called for the firing of the government minister who started the ongoing row over Salman Rushdie’s knighthood. Bhutto, who is in exile, “said Mohammad Ejaz ul-Haq had damaged Islam and Pakistan with his remarks in the Pakistan parliament.”
The People’s Bourgeois
“A major retrospective is to be held at Tate Modern of the work of 95-year-old Louise Bourgeois… Bourgeois was present during the birth pangs of modern art (she knew Marcel Duchamp personally) and has seen every avant-garde movement of the 20th century unfold. Her works can be seen as a reaction to movements such as surrealism, minimalism and abstract expressionism.”
The Science Behind Vocal Clarity
It’s a question that has occurred to almost anyone who’s ever attended an opera – as talented as these singers are, how is it that they manage to be heard clearly over the roar of a full-sized symphony orchestra? The answer is a lot more complicated than simple volume, and it explains why sopranos are easier to hear than any other voice part.
Another Day, Another Auction Record
“One of Damien Hirst’s trademark medicine cabinets has sold at auction for £9.65m ($19.28m,) breaking the European record for work by a living artist. A private bidder paid almost three times the estimate at Sotheby’s for Lullaby Spring, which contains 6,136 individually painted pills.”
Throwing No Stones
Philip Johnson’s 1949 Glass House, “which opens to the public Saturday as a National Trust for Historic Preservation site, is austere, but not threatening. It is one of the great monuments of modernism in America, by one of this country’s longest-lived and most influential architects… But the evidence of daily life has not been scrubbed from the house,” and Philip Kennicott says that makes the structure all the more fascinating.
What Could Make The Movies Better? Your Couch.
A new 12-screen multiplex in L.A. is “offering the home rec-room experience in a darkened public space. Three auditoriums in the facility have been equipped with leather sofas, loveseats, comfy chairs and side tables, arrayed much like you would have them in your home. It’s a style Landmark calls ‘Living Room’ and it’s been a huge hit.”