Eight major studios have joined to sue companies that edit parts of movies they find objectionable out the original versions and make them available to consumers. The movie studios charge that the companies are violating copyright laws. “The studios also allege the companies violate trademark law when they rent or sell an altered movie in the original packaging.”
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Sydney’s 2003 Festival
In a country of international festivals, the Sydney Festival is Australia’s largest. Last year’s emphasis on younger-playing attractions boosted ticket sales from 48,000 to 91,000. Keeping a big festival fresh, says director Brett Sheehy, even a successful festival, is a constant game of innovation and trial-and-error…
Polling For Art
As times get tougher for artists, the pressure to try to create work more people will want to see increases. That’s why artists Komar & Melamid’s work in ferreting out what people most want in a painting has been way ahead of its time. It’s art-by-poll, and the artists have taken the trouble to find out what people in 14 countries most want (and don’t want) to see in their artwork. Here’s a gallery…
The Problem Of Thinking Too Much…
For most of us, the problem would seem to be not thinking enough. But it can go the other way. According to one scholar, “overthinking” can sometimes be worse than not thinking at all. “The real difficulty is knowing when to stop thinking and go with your gut”…
Observing 2002’s Favorite Reads
Lots of poetry, books on war, and biographies published this year. Some two dozen critics from the pages of The Observer tick off their favorite reads of 2002.
Dia Foundation May Have To Close New York Headquarters
New York’s Dia Foundation is in a financial crisis. It’s “a major liquidity problem for Dia who if not actually bankrupt are in the midst of the most serious cash-flow crisis they have yet weathered. According to some reports the whole Dia building, (pioneer of the NY art world’s move to Chelsea) will be closed for the next three years or however long it takes to get back to something approaching solvency.”
Christo’s Central Park Project To Get Go Ahead
Christo and Jeanne-Claude have been trying for years to get approval to mount their ambitious “Gates” project in New York’s Central Park. But a variety of objections, including concern for the health of the park, have blocked the plan. Now Mayor Michael Bloomberg, “always at the forefront of city-wide public art” has okayed the project and “is a major motivator behind the fruition of this work.”
Getting To Know The Chairman-In-Waiting
Poet Dana Gioia is awaiting confirmation as new chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. “Born in the Los Angeles suburb of Hawthorne, Gioia is the son (and oldest of four children) of an Italian father who was a cabdriver and kids shoe store owner, and a Mexican mother who worked as a telephone company operator. Gioia was the first member of his family to attend college, receiving a B.A. from Stanford University.” He won’t say much now about arts policy before he’s confirmed by the US Senate. But: “It’s a cliché to say art should be provocative, just as it’s a falsehood to say that art should not be provocative.”
How Music Changes The Brain
A new study measures the physical effect of studying music on the brain. “Among expert musicians, certain areas of the cortex are up to 5% larger than in people with little or no musical training, recent research shows. In musicians who started their training in early childhood, the neural bridge that links the brain’s hemispheres, called the corpus callosum, is up to 15% larger. A professional musician’s auditory cortex — the part of the brain associated with hearing — contains 130% more gray matter than that of non-musicians.”
Playing On The Brain
Composers had always known that some keys and combinations of notes can manipulate an audience. But now researchers are actively studying how that manipulation works. Take the key of a piece of music, for example. “One chunk of the brain was responding when the melody was in G major or E minor and another part of the circuit was responding when it was in E major.”