A new electronic music interface makes creating music easier and more physical. “In terms of the style of play it encourages, it’s easier to improvise a more expressive style of play. Because it’s physical, there’s also a dynamic that engages the audience. They can actually see what the performer is doing. The Audiopad is projected on a special table equipped with radio sensors that track the position and movement of half a dozen plastic discs, or ‘pucks.’ Most of the pucks control a series of preprogrammed tracks – the rhythm, the bass line, the melody and so on.”
Tag: 07.31.03
Cambodian Cultural Sites Destroyed
The pillaging and destruction of Cambodian temples has accelerated at an alarming rate. “As the latest holes testify, anyone wishing to pillage the remaining hidden riches will encounter few obstacles. Experts fear the decades-long looting for artefacts across Cambodia is now so rampant there will soon be little left outside the splendours of the Unesco world heritage site at Angkor. Almost all sites of antiquity and temples far from towns are being destroyed…”
Opera House At Ground Zero Looking Unlikely
It’s looking more and more unlikely that New York City Opera will find a home in the performing arts center planned for the World Trade Center site. Space for the center has been reduced by 20 percent. “Given the reduction in the space available and the footprint that City Opera says it needs, it would seem that a significant change in plans would be needed to accommodate an opera house. The opera has proposed a new house with a 60,000-square-foot footprint, Paul Kellogg, general and artistic director of the opera, said in an interview yesterday — so 40,000 square feet would appear to be severely inadequate.”
A Rollicking, On-The-Edge History Of Libraries
So you thought libraries were staid, quiet places? “In Library: An Unquiet History, Matthew Battles, the Harvard rare-books librarian tells the story of that peculiar institution, whose fortunes, since man first etched a symbol in stone, have been governed as much by mass uninterest and bureaucratic incompetence as by war and natural disaster. ‘Libraries are as much about losing the truth … as about discovering it,’ writes Battles, pointing out that much of what has survived through the ages is owing not to public institutions but to private collectors, who were better able to weather the tides of biblioclasm – the destruction of books – that have periodically swept the world.”
Iraq Art To Tour US
Having invaded and occupied Iraq, the United States is planning to assemble some of Iraq’s greatest art treasures for a traveling exhibition to tour the US within the next six to eight months. Artwork will include “the so-called treasures of Nimrud, a collection of Assyrian jewellery dating back to the 8th century BC, which has never been shown abroad before.”
California Eviscerates Arts Funding
California slashes its arts funding from $18 million to a token $1 million, effectively shutting down the agency. “The new budget translates to less than 3 cents per person statewide. California will now rank dead last in per capita state spending for the arts. The national average is $1.10 per person.”
Tokyo Concert Hall Goes Free (For The Right Orchestras)
Tokyo’s Metropolitan Art Space was built in 1990, but has failed to attract the top international orchestras it hoped to book. So it has decided to offer the hall free to orchestras. Managers said “it would place short-term profits on the back burner and seek to attract top orchestras, including the Vienna Philharmonic, Boston Symphony and Berlin Philharmonic orchestras.”
Chinese Harry Fans Give Up Waiting On Translation – Do Their Own
Chinese fans of Harry Potter are impatient. The book hasn’t been published in Chinese yet. “The English-language edition of the Order of the Phoenix was published worldwide in June by Bloomsbury, but an official Chinese translation is not due for publication until September. Chinese fans of the teenage sorcerer have decided they cannot wait and amateur translators have so far posted 35 of the book’s 38 chapters on the Internet.”
Handicapping The Field – Who Will Lead Frick, Whitney?
Two of New York’s most venerable museums – the Frick and the Whitney – are looking for new leaders this summer. “Speculation about who will lead these two prominent Manhattan museums has become the hot topic in the art world during an otherwise quiet summer.”
Does BBC Pump Out US Tunes Over Homegrown?
Does BBC Radio 1 favor playing established American hits over British performers? That’s the charge. “It is easier for programmers to play proven American hits rather than gamble on new UK tracks. I would question whether it was good for the UK music industry, the British public or for the BBC in the long run.”