“When you think of it, the time compression between reading and writing is quite astonishing: the thriller that lasts for half a plane journey will have taken half a year to write. By contrast, audio and video are not lossy compression. They are lossy expansion. They take more time to convey less meaning.”
Tag: 09.27.07
When The Gamers Beat Hollywood
“The established entertainment industries have become cynical and complacent in their years of creative superiority. But while the TV and movie-types have been air-kissing, computer games makers have been developing a business which has outperformed Hollywood’s annual box office takings for several years. Halo 3 alone is expected to pip Spiderman 3 by taking more in one night than the summer blockbuster took on its opening weekend. Should the traditional media feel threatened? You’d better believe it.”
Calatrava’s Imprint Is All Over His Spire’s Apartments
“With high-end real estate markets reeling, the developer of the Chicago Spire on Wednesday did what any crafty developer would do to instill confidence in his $1.5 billion project: He had his star architect show off fresh plans for apartments, including one with a circular sleeping zone framed by sliding glass doors. How real-life buyers will react is anybody’s guess but these details clearly reflect the vision of architect Santiago Calatrava.”
Park Wildflowers Were Public Art, Chicago Judge Says
“Artist Chapman Kelley insisted the wildflowers he planted in Grant Park was not a garden but a federally protected work of art — a belief supported by a judge Wednesday. … Kelley’s attorney, Frank Hernandez of Dallas, said the case is believed to be the first time an artist using ‘alternative materials’ has successfully sued under the Federal Visual Artists Rights Act (VERA), passed in 1990 to protect public art and its creators.”
Publishing’s New Frontier: The Mobile Phone
“Love Sky (1.3m ‘copies’ sold, a film in the offing) is the latest of a new best-selling type of story, the keitai shosetsu, literally ‘portable (phone) novel’, read not on a page but on your phone screen. Armed with the latest in mobiles, Japan’s ‘oyayubi zoku’ or ‘thumb tribe’ are lapping up these novels, often written by teenage first-timers, themselves reared on the fast-paced, melodramatic world of anime….”
On The Vital Link Between Criticism And Creativity
“Real creativity … and real criticism share something that cuts to the heart of why art and literature matter to us: they are dynamic dialogues with what we’ve done before and what we will make in – and of – the future. As Oscar Wilde puts it: ‘Surely, criticism is itself an art … Criticism is, in fact both creative and independent … The antithesis between them is entirely arbitrary. Without the critical faculty, there is no artistic creation at all, worthy of the name.'”
Bosendorfer, Take 2: No Slapstick This Time, Please
“After the last one fell off the back of a lorry with a crash heard around the world of classical music, a very grand piano heading for a remote corner of Devon will be handled as delicately as a newborn babe. An £85,000 hand-built Bosendorfer Imperial Concert Grand is being presented by the firm to the eclectic Two Moors festival, a feast of classical music” whose previous Bosendorfer won fame with its unfortunate unloading calamity.
Knowing Van Gogh Through His Pen (And His Brush)
“Few written documents have the power to immerse readers in the mind of an artist — to get at the heart of how an artist thinks. This is partly because nothing can get us closer to art than art itself: Everything else is ancillary or anecdotal. It is also because few artists with literary gifts choose to put pen to paper, when they could be putting brush to canvas or chisel to marble.” Vincent van Gogh’s letters are among the exceptions to the rule.
What Would Jane Jacobs Say About Today’s NYC?
Good question, though a new exhibition about her doesn’t try to answer it. “We are all Jane Jacobsites today. … Obviously many people take Jane Jacobs’s name in vain, and many on either side of the urban debate claim her for their own. But the important thing is that — with the exception of a few younger urbanists rebelling against their parents — her vision of the world has overwhelmingly won the day.”
NBC Benefits From Nielsen Rules Changes
At first glance, it seems like NBC is beginning to pull itself out of the primetime ratings hole it’s dug over the last several seasons. But not so fast: those high ratings for certain shows are a direct result of complicated rules changes announced this summer by Nielsen, the company that collects TV ratings information. Essentially, NBC has found a way to make some shows count more than once per week…