As the Mostly Mozart Festival takes place inside Lincoln Center, a multimedia installation on the exterior of Avery Fisher Hall attracts nighttime audiences outside. “Standing with concertgoers examining the 12-foot-tall light boxes in the portico, the word you hear most often is ‘interesting.’ … The first light box takes its inspiration from a story about Mozart buying a pet starling, supposedly after hearing it sing a musical theme he had written.”
Tag: 08.14.07
Beauty And The Baseball (Oh, Wait, No, It’s Softball…)
“One of the New York theater world’s annual rites of summer — the Broadway Show League , in which softball teams representing Broadway and Off Broadway productions trade their costumes for cleats — will draw to a close on Thursday afternoon with a championship game in the Heckscher ball fields in Central Park. This final battle, after an 18-week season, will pit a team made up of representatives from ‘Wicked’ and ‘The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee’ against the winner of that morning’s all-Disney matchup between ‘The Lion King’ and ‘Beauty and the Beast.'”
“American Idol” Musical Bites The Dust On Broadway
“A Broadway show which was based on the hit reality TV programme American Idol has closed after its first official night on stage in New York. Idol: The Musical, which was dubbed a ‘satirical musical comedy’, was originally previewed in July. By the end of the month the entire cast had been replaced without explanation and fresh previews began on 1 August.”
New Audiences, It Turns Out, Include Avatars
“In the internet virtual world Second Life, you can buy property, gamble and go to lectures. You can attend film festivals, go to gigs and buy art. And next month, a British orchestra will stage the first full-scale symphonic concert on the site. The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic has created a virtual, 3-D version of its concert hall and on September 14 users of the website will be able to attend a concert led by the orchestra’s chief conductor, Vasily Petrenko.”
French Publisher Won’t Sue Over Teen’s Translation
“The French publishers of the Harry Potter books said Monday they are not seeking damages from a 16-year-old who allegedly posted an unauthorized translation of the final book in the series online. … The case is still under preliminary investigation by the French judicial police, and it is up to investigators to decide whether to try to bring the case to trial.”
U.S. Sends Rat To France. Cultural Diplomacy Ensues.
“In barely two weeks, a rat has managed to seduce the French and convince them that perhaps not all Americans are gastronomic louts, and that there might be hope yet for bridging the transatlantic cultural divide. ‘Ratatouille,’ the animated Hollywood movie starring a rat who overcomes all odds to become a chef in a venerable Paris restaurant, is defying stiff odds itself. Its Aug. 1 premiere in France drew the fourth-highest opening day attendance in French movie history.”
A German In Paris Is Named To Getty Research Post
“Thomas W. Gaehtgens, an internationally recognized scholar who is director of the German Center for the History of Art in Paris, will be the new leader of the Getty Research Institute, sources close to the Getty say. His appointment, expected to be announced today, will end a 10-month search for a successor to Thomas Crow, who left the prestigious position to chair the department of modern art history at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts.”
Appreciating Elizabeth Murray
“Elizabeth Murray’s death is enough to teach you how separate and undisclosing an artist’s work always is. And it reminds you how imperfect the very idea of artistic expression is. We know the work rises from within her, but it doesn’t describe her or capture her. Perhaps it’s best to say simply that it expresses what she thought it was possible to express with the tools she chose.”
Ford Foundation Picks Businessman To Lead It
“The Ford Foundation has selected a dark-horse candidate with little experience in institutional philanthropy as its new president. Luis A. Ubiñas, who has worked for McKinsey & Company, the consulting firm, for 18 years, will lead the organization, the nation’s second-largest foundation, with $11 billion in assets. Mr. Ubiñas’s appointment, to be announced today, is expected to stun the nonprofit world….”
What If We’re All Just Someone’s Cyber-Simulation?
“Until I talked to Nick Bostrom, a philosopher at Oxford University, it never occurred to me that our universe might be somebody else’s hobby. I hadn’t imagined that the omniscient, omnipotent creator of the heavens and earth could be an advanced version of a guy who spends his weekends building model railroads or overseeing video-game worlds like the Sims. But now it seems quite possible. In fact … it is almost a mathematical certainty that we are living in someone else’s computer simulation.”