Artist Steve Kurtz is still fighting off the FBI, which wanted to charge him with bioterrorism. “Kurtz used the analogy of a coffee grinder purchase to explain why the stakes in his case are so much weightier than artistic censorship. ‘Let’s say you go out and by a coffee grinder. And it says on it that you can’t grind spices in it, only coffee. And you say, to hell with that, I’m going to grind coffee and spices in it. If you do that and you send in your warranty — mail fraud. If they pull off that argument in court, it’ll make almost anyone vulnerable’.”
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Speak To Me -Celebs Discover Video Games
“Until recently, most video game voices have been provided by hundreds of anonymous, journeyman actors. Celebrities used to turn up their noses at the idea of such work. But as the video game industry’s earnings began to eclipse Hollywood’s box office numbers — the video game industry rang up more than $9.9 billion in North America in 2004 versus Hollywood’s North American box office of $9.4 billion — celebrity actors have been much more agreeable.”
Peru, Pyramids And An Ancient Civilization
Ruins on Peru’s desert coast are 4,700 years old and suggest civilization in the Americas is far older than previously thought. “The site of Caral, in the Supe Valley north of Lima, covers 66 hectares (165 acres) and includes pyramids 21m (70ft) high arranged around a large plaza. Whether it can truly be seen as a civilisation comparable in attainment with contemporary Egypt and Mesopotamia is doubtful, but it demonstrates that the tradition culminating in the Inca Empire had deeper roots than anyone imagined.”
Shades Of Gray
Monologist Spalding Gray has inspired a generation of solo artists paying homage. “The man who turned the most intimate details of his life into the stuff of brilliant solo storytelling becomes the haunting presence in the lives of a whole new generation of actor-writers. As it turns out, it’s not all that easy to come to terms with an artist who inspired them (directly or indirectly) and then, at the age of 62, committed suicide.”
Times Reflected In fFIDA
Toronto’s fFIDA is the largest dance festival in Canada, and this year’s edition provided a good overview of the dance scene. “The festival had some outstanding choreographies and dancers, but there was also a lot of blancmange. There seems to be quite of few groups of attractive dancers (mostly from Toronto, alas) who can’t choreograph very well. Dance is always a sign of the times and there were very few funny works, and pitifully few political ones. The themes were mostly abstract, or navel-gazing, or angst-filled relationships, and a sharp edge was missing overall. Electronic music-cum-soundscape remains the score of choice, so any dance that actually used something melodic was a relief indeed.”
Pop Art – Past Its Sell-By Date
“I suppose this happens to all art after a while, but now that Pop Art has been going for more than 30 years — Peter Blake keeps the flag flying for Britain, but it’s an increasingly lonely task — I’ve grown tired of its blandishments, its exhortation of the temporary, the cheaply made, the gleeful interest in extreme fame or utter ordinariness. The bigger problem is that while Pop Art originally turned the tables on high art, making the banal significant and the ugly sort of beautiful, the rest of the world has not only since caught up but left it far behind.”
Americans Abandon TV This Summer
“With the notable exception of ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars” — by far the summer’s biggest new hit, with an average of 16.8 million viewers — the six major broadcast networks have slogged through a disappointing summer, with household viewing down about 6% compared with the same period last year. Among the advertiser-friendly demographic of adults ages 18 to 49, the slide was even worse, off 10% according to figures from Nielsen Media Research.”
Borrow This, Pass It On
The first online library is an enormous chain letter of books. “After choosing a book, each reader sends a stamped addressed envelope to whoever owns the volume. The owner posts the book and the reader is allowed to keep it for up to five weeks before passing it on to the next person in the chain. After beginning its journey from reader to reader, each book is destined to remain in circulation indefinitely. Anyone failing to keep the chain in motion will have membership frozen, although there are no plans to introduce library fines.”
May The Ringtone Be With You
“Once limited to song samples and hip-hop clips, mobile phone ringers increasingly are featuring memorable movie quotes, including dialogue from titles as varied as “Napoleon Dynamite,” “Office Space,” “Without a Paddle” and “Meet the Fockers.” Although the new trend may make customized cellphone ringers even more annoying than ever, they hold the promise of delivering new profits to the studios. Ring tones, as the personal ringers are called, have become a $3-billion worldwide boon for record labels, and Hollywood’s studios and labor unions are now trying to figure out if the movie ring tone market is anywhere near that large.”
Shakespeare – How “Authentic” Do You Want?
“For 10 years, London’s Globe, an obsessive facsimile overseen by Mark Rylance, has specialised in conjuring a theatrical time-warp. Its latest experimental project in the education of London’s theatre audience is a staging in OP (original pronunciation) of Troilus, starring David Sturzaker and Rylance’s daughter, Juliet, in the title roles. Some will complain that this is a pointless exercise in the pursuit of a will-o’-the-wisp – authenticity – that adds little to our understanding of Shakespeare. In practice, however, there’s no loss of clarity in the switch from RP (received pronunciation) to OP, though it is momentarily disorienting.”