Not everyone pays for an artist’s work. That’s a good thing – it allows entry to the work and opens possibilities for the artist. “An ecosystem with many ways for unintended free-release is a requirement. Therefore, an ecosystem which looks to a mixture of the traditional amateur, performance, patronage, and commission forms of payment is a requirement. Depending upon rigid enforcement of performance payments will disrupt the balance. Listening to representatives from the recording and movie industries, you would think that selling fixed artifacts is the only way that artists can get paid. That has never been the case, and should not be in the future or else society and art itself will suffer.”
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States Find Arts Funding Melting Away
States across America are cutting their arts budgets – last week Colorado whacked its budget by 90 percent. A number of states are in danger of not qualifying for money from the National Endowment for the Arts this year…
The Real Digital Film Revolution – Tiny Cameras
Digital equipment is changing not just the technology of how films are made, but the styke in which they’re made. “You can take as many takes as you want, so you don’t have to force anything. We are seeing more and more of this ‘in-the-moment’ kind of thing. This technology offers a much more intimate kind of movie.” For one thing, new tiny digital cameras are so small they don’t intrude on or dominate scenes as they have.
When Movies Weren’t “Product”
The Golden Age of movies in the 70s, writes David Ansen, differed significantly from today’s movies in an important way. “The great thing about back then, when the likes of Coppola and Scorsese, Altman and Bogdanovich, Friedkin, Mazursky, Polanski, Ashby, Woody Allen and Peckinpah radically altered the American cinematic landscape, was the fact that their movies weren’t merely ‘product.’ They were rule-breaking personal visions that connected with the audience in ways studio movies had rarely attempted before. Instead of mere escapism, the audience wanted relevance.”
Sondheim – Operas In Disguise?
Though Stephen Sondheim is considered a master of musical theatre, the esteem isn’t shared by a popular audience. So should his pieces be performed by opera companies instead? “Sondheim himself makes no secret of thinking otherwise. He even affects not to like opera, and has never written a work intended for opera-house production. Still, the alacrity with which ‘Sweeney Todd’ and ‘A Little Night Music’ have been taken up by major opera companies in America and elsewhere raises the question of whether they might really have been, all along, modern operas in disguise.”
Monkey Shakespeare With Lots Of S’s
Could monkeys typing actually produce Shakespeare given enough monkeys and enough time? “Now someone has attempted to put the theory to the test. Admittedly the British academics involved in this unusual project did not have an infinite number of typewriters, nor monkeys, nor time, but they did have six Sulawesi crested macaque monkeys, and one computer, and four weeks for them to get creative. The results of this trial at Paignton zoo in Devon were more Mothercare than Macbeth. The macaques – Elmo, Gum, Heather, Holly, Mistletoe and Rowan – produced just five pages of text between them, primarily filled with the letter S. There were greater signs of creativity towards the end, with the letters A, J, L and M making fleeting appearances, but they wrote nothing even close to a word of human language.”
Congressman Proposes Rollback Of Patriot Act Snooping On Library Patrons
US Congressman Bernie Sanders introduces a bill to roll back some of the government snooping into libraries allowed under the Patriot Act. “We need law enforcement to track terrorists down before they do their evil deeds. But if we give up some of our most cherished freedoms — the right to read what we want without surveillance; the need for ‘probable cause’ before searches are made — the terrorists win, for their attacks will have struck at the very heart of our constitutional rights. To remedy the excesses of the Patriot Act that threaten our right to read, I have introduced the Freedom to Read Protection Act. The bill, which has the support of Democrats and Republicans, progressives and conservatives, will establish once again that libraries and bookstores are no place for fishing expeditions.”
New Electronic “Paper”
Ond of the complaints about electronic publishing is that it doesn’t have the “feel” of a book. Now, “in a paper published in the British science journal Nature, E Ink executives said they have successfully developed a prototype display just three-tenths of a millimeter thick, using stainless steel and a plastic covering, that can display words and pictures at up to 96 pixels per inch. Besides being lightweight, the display can be rolled into a half-inch-wide scroll without damage, E Ink said.”
Can Economics Quantify The Quality Of Art?
A Universisty of Chicago economist contends that “techniques commonly used by economists, such as statistical analysis, can be employed to understand even a seemingly subjective world such as art. By studying the careers of more than 100 modern artists, David Galenson proved certain artists did their best work early in their careers – with ‘best’ determined by which works fetch highest prices at auction and are displayed by museums – while other artists did their best work later in their careers. Those who peaked early, Galenson claimed, were conceptual artists, driven by a singular vision. The late bloomers, by contrast, were experimental innovators who used a long period of trial and error to eventually create their masterpieces. What irked art historians was the prospect of dividing artists into neat categories, of treating their output like a commodity.”
NJ Official Fights For Arts Funding
New Jersey’s secretary of state is Regena Thomas, and she’s fighting for her department. “The secretary of state, appointed by Gov. James E. McGreevey, is in charge of promoting and preserving the arts, history and culture in New Jersey. But in the $23 billion state budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1, the governor has proposed that her programs be largely abolished. The budget proposal calls for the $47 million allocated to her office to be cut by 87 percent. This will effectively shut down the State Council on the Arts, leaving New Jersey the only state without one, according to Ms. Thomas’s office. It will also mothball the Historical Commission and the New Jersey Cultural Trust, although, like the council, each would continue to exist in name.”