“One of the leading themes of current philosophy is that the notion of objectivity is utterly illusory. This is not some post-modern pose: the subjectivity of scientific knowledge has been proved with mathematical rigour. The upshot of these proofs is that data merely serves to update our pre-existing beliefs, and that its impact on those beliefs depends on such touchy-feely concepts as trust. There was a time when philosophers would have been content to point all this out, and then sit back with a smug smile. No longer…”
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Pac Man Back (And This Time It’s Art!)
“Twenty-five years after they colonized the arcades, the original video games have begun to invade a whole new area: pop culture and high art.” They’re showing up everywhere…
A Brain RAM Problem?
“If the computer is bringing such momentous intellectual gains, where is the evidence of it? Only 42% of the 2003 freshman class in the California State University system were proficient in math and English. SAT scores, reading levels and other measurements of achievement reported by the press show a steady decline and a consistent lowering of levels of understanding, knowledge and abilities, most markedly since the God-like computer came on the scene. Certainly there are social, cultural and economic reasons for some of it, but the most basic cause may be neurological.”
Aix – Reinventing, One Year After Nothing
Last year’s AIx Festival had to be canceled because of labor unrest. This year the festival starts over. “Aix has always been the prince of French music festivals since it was founded in 1948. It is based in a rich university town with well-preserved aristocratic mansions, winding streets and squares protected from the strong provençal sun by the essential plane trees; a white collar town full of lawyers that looks down on blue collar city of Marseilles, barely 30 kilometres away.”
Nothing Amateur About This Music Competition
The second Washington International Piano Amateur Competition wasn’t about starting careers. “Participants seemed to take sheer pleasure in refining their technique and playing before an audience. It was also apparent that the amateur piano-playing world is a bit of an incestuous society, and the event was as much a chance for the participants to catch up with old friends as an opportunity to hone their Schubert or Beethoven. There was a nice purity to it all: comfortable people reveling in all the aspects of music and piano playing.”
Critic Faces The Criticized (It’s Not Pretty?)
TV critic Tim Goodman calls PBS the “worst-run media company in the world” in print, then runs into PBS head honcho Pat Mitchell. And Goodman’s feeling a bit emotionally down. And…
Teachout Named To National Arts Council
AJBlogger Terry Teachout has been named by President George Bush to be a member of the National Council on the Arts. Terry is also drama critic for The Wall Street Journal and music critic for Commentary magazine. Also nominated is “James K. Ballinger, who specializes in American art, has been director of the Phoenix Art Museum since 1982. He has overseen major exhibitions on the works of Diego Rivera, Frank Lloyd Wright and Frederic Remington.”
Art Of The Camera Phone
“London-based photo-digital artist Henry Reichhold is using Nokia 7600 and 7610 camera phones to create huge panoramic images of events and places. Using the phones to snap a series of images and then stitching them together with software, he’s produced stunning landscapes of London seen during both day and night.”
Cable Beats Broadcast This Summer
US broadcast networks are suffering the summer doldrums. “More viewers are watching cable than all the big networks combined. In June, about 57.7 percent of the TVs in the U.S. were watching cable, up 7.4 percent from the year before.”
Bleeping Because Of FCC
“Three foul words, including the F-word, have been bleeped from the new PBS drama Cop Shop, much to the chagrin of Richard Dreyfuss, its star and executive producer.” Why the exorcising? FOFCC – Fear of the FCC.