“Evolution — not extinction — has always been the primary rule of media ecology. New media predators rise up, but other media species typically adapt rather than perish. That is the message of both history and leading media theorists, like Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman. Television, for example, was seen as a threat to radio and movies, though both evolved and survived.”
Tag: 08.22.10
How Hollywood Depicts Foreign Speech
“Since the beginning of Hollywood, filmmakers after an exotic or romantic effect have taken their stories abroad. Since the advent of sound in the late 1920s, this tendency has created a little-discussed problem: How to represent foreign speech?”
The Next Digital Musical Instrument – It Knows How You Want To Sound
“It rips the mask off the studio tricks for your everyday music fan. If someone wants to sing and they want to know how reverb or phasing or flanging works, they can play with it.”
Boston Globe Theatre Critic Says Goodbye
Louise Kennedy: “To speak of impersonal criticism is as ridiculous as to speak of impersonal drama, impersonal music, impersonal painting, or impersonal reaction to alcoholic liquor. There is no such thing.”
The Montreal Symphony’s Long Langorous Summer (Not Like The Old Days)
“You remember the frenetic pace of the Dutoit summers, and the number of programs and concerts and park concerts he did. Glad we are not in that ringer anymore, but there must be some middle ground somewhere.”
Guards Refuse To Allow Moonlight Acropolis Opening
“The culture and tourism ministry says the citadel is not among the 92 sites and museums to open by moonlight Aug. 24 — the one night a year the public can enter monuments after sundown. A ministry statement Friday said guards demanded more than their legal pay to work at night. Guards claim they were asked to work for free, and then offered less than last year.”
Remembering The Poetry Of Patti Smith
“Smith’s story serves as an antidote to the trend of the last few decades in which artists have become arguably more proficient in the technical aspects of their disciplines through formalized training but often at the expense of a natural connection to a thriving cultural community.”
How Was Van Gogh Stolen From Cairo Museum? The Alarms Were Broken!
“Egypt’s top prosecutor, Abdel Meguid Mahmud, said none of the alarms at the Khalil Museum and only seven out of 43 security cameras were working. He said that the broken alarms and cameras had not worked for some time.”
An Excess Of Copies (It’s Information Overload)
“The reason information can increase like this is that, if the necessary raw materials are available, copying creates more information. Of course it is not new information, but if the copies vary (which they will if only by virtue of copying errors), and if not all variants survive to be copied again (which is inevitable given limited resources), then we have the complete three-step process of natural selection.”
Venerable Mikhailovsky Ballet makes A Bold Move In Hiring Nacho Duato
“Although Mr. Duato is a well-regarded choreographer, his lush movement style, which combines a balletic line with a more contemporary weightedness, is hardly on the cutting edge. Still, putting him in charge of a state ballet company is a bold move in a country where tradition holds a powerful allure and change, by all accounts, is exceptionally hard to implement.”