Tag: 02.15.05

Machover’s Music Game

Composer Tod Machover has invented a new toy to teach children how to make music. “Working with the Fisher-Price toy company, Machover has come up with Symphony Painter, musical composition software that allows children ages four and above to draw music and have it played through a hand-held device. Selecting from a palette of 24 musical patterns and 24 instruments and zany sounds, the child draws his composition on a small screen called a Color Pixter. The device is fun but not mindless, and encourages the youngster to listen carefully while constructing a coherent piece.”

Houston’s MFA Gets $450 Million

Oil heiress Caroline Wiess Law has left Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts the bulk of her estate. “When all of Law’s assets are sold and the legal proceedings conclude, possibly by the end of this year, the museum could net between $400 million and $450 million. In recent history, this would be one of the biggest, if not the biggest cash gifts to an art museum. This money will help make Houston one of the most important museums in terms of programming and serving the public.”

Colorizing On The Nile

A website is offering images of colored ancient statues. The experiments in color are part of “a growing trend that has resulted in a recent Vatican Museum exhibit on colored statues, as well as actual restoration of the world’s best-preserved painted sculpture. Before these projects, most all Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Greek, Roman and other early sculptures only were seen in the monotone colors of the sculpture’s primary material, such as clay or marble, even though many of the objects originally were covered with gilt and bright paints.”

WTC Memorial: A “Grandiose Paen To Grief”

What has happened to the World Trade Center Memorial? A year after being chosen, the design has been bloated, writes James Russell. “It was inevitable the planned memorial would grow to a disturbingly large size, once it was deemed that the towers’ footprints must be entirely preserved — for political, not design reasons, in response to pleas from some of the victims’ family members. In the past year, the proposed project has expanded into a vast commemorative complex; it threatens to become a grandiose paean to grief.”

A Hollywood Giant And His Progeny

“As Harvey Weinstein and Miramax prepare to go their separate ways – the Walt Disney Company, which now owns the company, has said it does not plan to renew the contract of Mr. Weinstein and his brother, Bob, to run the unit – more than a few power players in Hollywood have been tallying up their debt to a 52-year-old entrepreneur who often started them in the business, and sent many on their way with lessons that did not always come easy.”

TV Shows For Your Cell Phone

Producers are starting to create shows for mobile phones. The producers of the hit TV show “24” have jumped in with a spin-off. “Each of the one-minute mobile episodes (referred to as mobisodes) is specially shot and edited for the small, small screen. ‘Conspiracy,’ produced by Twentieth Century Fox Television, a division of the News Corporation, is one of three original series making their debut on Verizon’s V Cast, a high-speed cellular phone network that delivers broadband Internet-quality video.”