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The Marketing Of Frida

“The Frida Kahlo Corporation, created by Isolda Kahlo, is busy exploiting the artist’s name with a series of products. “The family has marketed Frida Kahlo jewellery and clothing after her niece won the rights to register the name as a brand. But the commercialisation of the painter, who died in 1954 at the age of 47, has provoked a row between her friends, family and critics.”

Switzerland – Art Of The ordinary

“In the rest of the world, cities clamour for iconic buildings, blockbuster museums and galleries, which they desperately hope will put them on the map. Our everyday surroundings, however, new houses and out-of-town shopping malls, streetscapes and utilities, are virtually untouched by architects, a saddening, immature blend of Noddy-houses and big sheds, anonymous boxes and ominous CCTV poles. In Switzerland there are few icons. Instead, the average is executed with thought and skill, and the whole is consequently raised to a sublime where even the signal boxes are designed by world-class architects.”

Detroit Symphony Experiments With Giant Video

The orchestra mounted two large video screens in its hall for a performance. “The concert was the first in the ‘Classics Unmasked’ series that marks a departure from the DSO’s traditional format. The new style aims to attract a generation weaned on television and stimulated by music videos and the Internet. For the first time, audience members in the farthest seats could see the angle of a violin bow as it hit a string or even the veins of a musician’s hands.”

Detroit Orchestra: Video As A Tool

Large video screens at the Detroit Symphony this week were intended not to be distracting. “We’re not making a TV show. Our mission is to reveal things to the audience that they can’t see, not broadcast the music. This is the society we’ve become. We want to teach people that it’s OK to take the time to listen to music, but we have to be willing to meet people where they are.”

The Invisible Canadians

From Dublin to Dresden, Barcelona to Berlin, performances by Canadian singers can be almost daily occurrences in Europe — and anyone determined to hear them all would soon rack up a lot of air miles. The not-so-good news, however, is that Canada’s contribution to this most European of art forms tends to go pretty much unnoticed: Like Canadian movie stars in Hollywood, our finest opera singers are often assumed to be from somewhere else.

When Google Rules The World?

“In less than a decade, Google has gone from guerrilla startup to 800-pound gorilla. Google has always wanted to be more than a search engine. Even in the early days, its ultimate goal was extravagant: to organize the world’s information. High-minded as that sounds, Google’s ever-expanding agenda has put it on a collision course with nearly every company in the information technology industry: Amazon.com, Comcast, eBay, Yahoo!, even Microsoft.”