A Canadian company specializing in mobile phone content has announced plans for a new film festival, to be held entirely in the palm of your hand. “Mobifest aims to bring fame and notoriety to the little-known art of the so-called ‘pocket films’ that are beginning to take the world by storm… The festival welcomes mobile filmmakers from around the world. All film must be 60 seconds or less, and shot and created specifically for the small screen, either using mobile phone, smartphone or other handheld device.”
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Putting Art Thieves On His List
One of the most successful crusaders for the restoration of stolen and looted art turns out not even to be all that big an art aficionado. But there’s no question in anyone’s mind that Julian Radcliffe and his Art Loss Register have been extremely successful at reuniting art with its rightful owners. To date, the Radcliffe has had a hand in the restoration of more than $100 million worth of art, and the register now catalogs more than 170,000 items worldwide.
Abbreviations and the Verbing of Everything Do Not A Language Make
“Computer-speak is not just a dialect or vocabulary — it has grammatical principles all its own. That’s the claim in the current issue of English Today… But [the] suggestion that the grammar of e-English is new or different doesn’t hold up,” and Nathan Bierma can prove it.
What The 1st Amendment Needs Is A Hit TV Show
A new study clearly designed to shock Americans into a higher sense of civic responsibility has revealed that more of us can name the members of TV’s Simpson family than can name more than one of the five freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment. (Yes, there are five. Look it up.) In other stunning news, ArtsJournal has learned that more Americans are familiar with the work of Jon Stewart than can recite a Walt Whitman poem from memory.
Global Distribution and Creative Control? Why, It’s Madness!
“The clash between a musician’s creative impulses and the commercial imperatives that drive record companies is as old as recorded sound itself. Artists make the music and labels sell it, promoting and marketing it to the masses and reaping the lion’s share of the profits. The online music revolution has begun rewriting that equation… yet most digital music distributors still perpetuate the record company business model, grabbing a healthy chunk of an artist’s online sales.” One Boston entrepreneur is hoping to change that model, offering a new service which allows musicians to make their songs available on iTunes and other online services while retaining copyright control.
Darwin In New York
Twenty years ago, it would have been thought laughable that the theory of evolution might once again come under attack in U.S. society. But Darwin is a hot-button issue in 21st-century America, and the creationists (or whatever they’re calling themselves now) seem to be winning over a large chunk of the country. So it probably shouldn’t be a surprise that New York’s Museum of Natural History thought that now might not be a bad time for a refresher course on the man, the theory, and the difference between research and guessing.
2005’s Most-Visited Exhibitions
Three of the top ten most-visited exhibitions worldwide last year were in Japan. The Art Newspaper publishes its annual list…
Deceased MoMA Curator’s Inside Memoir
William S. Rubin, the longtime curator of the Museum of Modern Art died at the age of 78 in January. Before he died he wrote a memoir. “The 198-page typescript chronicles Rubin’s professional life, with particular focus on the museum’s complex relationships with dealers, trustees, collectors and artists. Few if any published accounts lay out these usually covert matters in such frank detail.”
(Inspired) By The Bard
One of the Shakespearean legends that has sprung up over the centuries is the existence of a lost play, The History of Cardenio, based on Don Quixote and lost to the mists of time since at least the 18th century. No one is certain what became of the original, but one scholar from Florida has been working feverishly to reconstruct the play from what little source material remains. It’s a controversial project, since the reconstructed play can never hope to be authentic, but some scholars say its worth some inaccuracy to get a glimpse of what Shakespeare might have written.
Smithsonian To Get Down With Its Bad Self
You would never mistake the staid and distinguished Smithsonian Institution for the Rock Hall of Fame, but “at an emotional and at times rowdy news conference yesterday at the Hilton New York, a group of hip-hop pioneers gathered beside the dark-suited, white-gloved Smithsonian staff to announce a plan for a major new collection devoted to the music. Called ‘Hip-Hop Won’t Stop: The Beat, the Rhymes, the Life,’ it is to be a broad sampling of memorabilia, from boomboxes and vinyl albums to handwritten lyrics and painted jeans jackets, as well as multimedia exhibits and oral histories.”