“Working with programmers, a computer vision expert and an adventurous saxophone quartet, [a Georgia composer] is creating a work in which a restless audience is very literally part of the music. Listeners and musicians are encouraged to wander around the performance space during the concert, while digital cameras track their motion. Those movements are fed into a software simulation, and Freeman’s algorithms, using parameters such as distance from performers, speed and ‘sheepiness,’ use the data to dynamically create a score on Pocket PCs attached to the musicians’ instruments.”
Author: sbergman
Järvi Re-Upped In Cincy
The Cincinnati Symphony has extended the contract of its music director, Paavo Järvi, through the 2010-11 season, and added an unusual “evergreen” clause under which the contract will renew automatically in subsequent seasons by mutual agreement.
Of Course, You Can Do The Same Thing At Home
With CD sales continuing to tank, the latest attempt to stave off digital defeat is to let consumers burn their own custom, in-store CDs. “New machines, available from at least five different companies and now in operation in more than 150 record stores, Starbucks, book stores and big-box electronics stores across the country, allow consumers to pick 15 or so singles from various artists and burn them onto a CD.”
Helsinki Hall May Cost 50% More Than Anticipated
Completion of a planned new concert hall in the Finnish capital of Helsinki will be delayed for at least six months after construction bids came in considerably higher than expected. “Currently, the estimated costs of the music complex are EUR 106 million. The quotation of Peab Seicon appears to imply that using a lump-sum contract, the house would cost up to one and a half times as much as estimated.”
Crystal Tapped For Twain Prize
Billy Crystal has been announced as the winner of this year’s Mark Twain Prize, presented by the Kennedy Center, “not just for his comedy but also for his charity work. In 1986, with Whoopi Goldberg and Robin Williams, Crystal started Comic Relief. The annual show raises money for the homeless ,and most recently, the survivors of Hurricane Katrina.”
What’s Going On Behind The CanStage Curtain?
“CanStage, Toronto’s largest not-for-profit theatre, announced a series of changes to its administrative structure yesterday,” and some observers are sniffing a behind-the-scenes power struggle. “Was there even a process involved? …This is one of the largest theatres in the country and it appointed a new artistic director without a search or a consultation. That can’t be right.”
A Museum Where Art And Architect Cooperate
Christopher Hawthorne loves the Seattle Art Museum’s new home, mainly because it manages to properly showcase the art inside it without subsuming the architect’s skill and vision. “Increasingly, the most satisfying new museums are the ones that manage to bypass that art-versus-architecture debate and give visitors a real variety of visual and spatial experience.”
We’re Holding Out For A Gehry Armoire
“A steel chair designed by Daniel Libeskind for the ground floor of his new Michael Lee-Chin Crystal at Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum will go into production by Nienkamper this year, making it the first piece of furniture the globetrotting architect has designed for commercial sale… The museum will take orders for the chair, priced at $10,000 to $12,000, at its gift shops, but will not share in the revenue.”
Where Art And Employment Meet (And Clash)
Is art school merely supposed to broaden your horizons and mold your skill as an artist, or should it also prepare you to make a decent living in your chosen field? The question is more than academic at the Ontario College of Art & Design, which is being accused by some of its current and former students of becoming more a job factory than an art school.
Curbing TV Violence May Run Afoul Of The Courts
The FCC and various lawmakers are looking for a way to exert more control over how much violence is allowed on television in the US. But if new regulations are to stick, the trick will be defining “violence” narrowly enough that the rules won’t be immediately struck down by the courts.