It’s the latest thing – movieoke. People watch a movie together with the sound off, performing the script themselves into a microphone. “It’s harder than karaoke. People don’t watch movies over and over again the way you listen to songs over and over again. And there’s no music in the background to help when you mess up.”
Tag: 07.28.04
Housing That Makes An Ass Of Toronto
Toronto’s mammoth CityPlace project is “one of North America’s largest residential developments and, at the risk of putting too fine a point on the matter, it’s making an ass of downtown Toronto.” How does it go wrong? Let me count the ways…
Using Poor Workers As Fodder For Art – Is That OK?
Spanish-born artist Santiago Sierra hired 10 Iraqi immigrant workers and sprayed them with liquid plastic to make his latest work. “My first reaction to the use of living men and women in this way was revulsion. I felt indignant that a modern artist should use vulnerable people to make work that will be shown to a small, rarefied, and comparatively affluent audience. Is it not a violation of human dignity to pay immigrants to participate in so hazardous and humiliating a process? As visitors to the exhibition, are we not somehow colluding in the economic exploitation of migrant workers?”
Ottawa Pulling Out Of Human Rights Museum Project?
A new Canadian Museum for Human Rights, to be built in Winnipeg, was the dream of the late Izzy Asper. He put up much of the money and the Canadian government said it would chip in a significant amount. But then the country got a new Prime Minister, and though the project is well into the planning and design phase, the feds have reversed field. The government “position is simple and stark: There is no written commitment for federal funding beyond the $30-million, and therefore no commitment exists.”
Smiley’s Letter-A-Day NYT Habit
Novelist Jane Smiley has had nine letters to the editor published in the New York Times in the past four years. Considering the Times gets about 1000 letters a day, that’s quite a record. How does she do it? “Depending on what’s going on in the world, I send them a letter every day. Some days I send two.”
The New Producers
A new generation of London theatre producers is changing the business. “These new-style producers are not just moneybags, but are intrinsic to the creative process. They represent genuine producer/practitioner partnerships. The behind-the-scenes efforts of this new generation, who often work in non-traditional theatre spaces, are changing the face of British theatre beyond all recognition and making the mainstream sit up and take notice.”
Music’s Next Big Thing
What’s the Next Big Idea in music? It’s a flawed question, to be sure. Just asking it betrays a bias about how the history of music works. Twelve of America’s best music critics debate the question in a new AJ Blog called Critical Conversation…
NY Phil In the Round?
Facing a $300 million bill to renovate Avery Fisher Hall, the orchestra is experimenting with a stage that would put the orchestra in the center of the auditorium surrounded by seats. “The experiment put the orchestra out much closer to the middle of the hall than ever before, allowing it to play under a higher ceiling. Onstage the musicians play in what is essentially a box set back under a lower roof than the one over the audience.”