There have been some very big-selling books this summer, and you’d think the publishing industry would be happy about it. Not exactly. They’re cutting staff and complaining of a slump. Big “sales don’t necessarily mean big profits, especially if everyone is expecting a hit. With Hillary Clinton receiving an $8 million advance, Simon & Schuster needed hundreds of thousands of sales to make money on the book. And Amazon.com, anticipating tremendous competition for the Potter book, offered a 40 percent discount on the $29.99 suggested price. The result: Despite more than 1 million sales worldwide, the online retailer announced it essentially broke even with Order of the Phoenix.”
Tag: 07.29.03
Art Is Where You Find It
More than 1000 artists around the world are participating in the Found Art Project. “They make small artworks — sculpted figures, booklets of drawings, decorated mailing labels, collaged postcards and CDs, sidewalk chalk drawings, even ‘fairy houses’ made by kids and tied to trees — and ‘release them into the wild.’ They leave them at public places such as park benches, library shelves, hospital waiting rooms, grocery bulletin boards and malls. Those who find the artworks can keep them, throw them away or leave them someplace else.”
Royal Shakespeare Shakeup Is Opportunity
Michael Billington writes that the sudden resignation of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s managing director is an opportunity for the company. “Normally the sudden resignation of a theatre company’s managing director would be interpreted as a sign of crisis. In fact Chris Foy’s departure from the RSC enormously strengthens the hand of its artistic director, Michael Boyd, in setting his seal upon the company.”
NYC Libraries Beg For Money
New York City libraries are seeing their budgets slashed and their services to the public cut. So “for the first time, neighborhood branches are putting out donation boxes, in a desperate effort to offset budget cuts that mean 3,000 fewer books a year for each branch, reduced hours of operation and interminable waits for best sellers.”
Painterly Projections
“One of the National Gallery’s most extraordinary paintings, Jan van Eyck’s Portrait of Arnolfini and His Wife, is at the centre of an increasingly ugly debate between scientists over whether the Flemish artist employed optical projections to help him paint it.”
Graffiti Explained
“Most art is unadmittedly competitive; graffiti is nakedly so. Writers vie for prominence of their works, their size, complexity, technique and above all their ubiquity. Elaborate etiquette regulates this rivalry, and competition is joined by overwriting a rival’s work. When I accompanied a TV team to watch the well-known writer, Prime, produce a work on a quasi-official site, the most interesting and shocking act was his first – taking a large roller to the painting already there, entirely blotting it out. If convention governs the terms of rivalry and respect between writers, it also quite rigidly governs the look of graffiti.”
Recording Industry Threats Don’t Deter File-Swappers
Music file-swappers seem to be unfazed by recording industry threats of legal action against them. “Just 17% of swappers ages 18 and over say they have cut back on file sharing because of the potential legal consequences, according to a survey released by Jupiter Research at the company’s annual Plug.IN digital music conference Monday. And 43% see nothing wrong with online file trading; only 15% say it’s wrong.”
Sonic Mush At The World’s Biggest Chamber Music Festival
Ottawa’s International Chamber music Festival is the largest chamber music festival in the world, with 110 concerts in two weeks, featuring some of the best chamber groups playing today. This is the festival’s tenth anniversary, and to celebrate it staged a concert with 16 pianists performing on ten pianos… resulting in a bit of a sonic mush, writes Colin Eatock.
What Becomes A Pirate?
The recording industry wants to protect its copyrights and outlaw file-sharing. But file-sharing is a slippery technology that evolves quickly and beats circumvention. “The only solution, some say, is to legitimize the new technology, just as old record-copying technologies have been legalized, and to license file sharing itself, while also offering pay services that are far superior to peer-to-peer networks such as Kazaa. The trouble right now is that technology companies like Kazaa have been trying to get licences for this music. They want to do it legitimately. They want to pay artists. The trouble is that the five multibillion-dollar record companies have refused to give them licences for the past five years…”
Ravinia Denies Chicago Symphony Report
Chicago’s Ravinia Festival – longtime summer home of the Chicago Symphony – says it doesn’t plan to “drastically reduce its number of Chicago Symphony Orchestra concerts in future seasons, despite a report suggesting otherwise in Monday’s Crain’s Chicago Business…” The festival says that “ticket sales in Ravinia’s 3,200-seat pavilion are down 5 percent so far for CSO concerts compared with last summer. But reducing the number of CSO performances is only one option to be considered when the orchestra’s contract with Ravinia comes up for renewal after next season.”