“Computers are tremendous labor-saving devices. They give us power to accomplish extraordinary amounts of work in extraordinarily short intervals of time. But they also give us the capability to do things like play solitaire. Or send instant messages. Fiddle with fonts. Futz with PowerPoint. Twiddle with images. Reconfigure link rollovers. Large investments in computers and communications seem necessary for rapid, industry-level productivity growth. Still, there is a strong sense that computers are less of an asset to the economy than they might be if we truly knew what they were good for and how to use them.”
Tag: 06.03
The One-Performance Syndrome
“As American orchestras perform an increasing number of premieres each season, it is all the more difficult to obtain that elusive second performance. A major roadblock toward that goal is the frequent inability of composers-and their publishers and agents-to secure recordings of concert performances for use in promoting new works.”
How The World Solves Big Problems (But They Don’t Work)
The world has lots of big problems. But at present there are only “four types of mechanisms to finesse the world’s world-sized problems. Unfortunately, none of them are of much use.”
The Creative Economy
The economy is changing. And the most highly-desired jobs? Those with creative outlets, flexibility, a sense of individuality. “Creative individuals no longer need to be isolated, romantic souls who’ve given up worldly success for the sake of their art. We must abandon our prejudices regarding the sources of economic value. The production of wealth comes not simply from labor or raw materials or even intellectual brilliance. It comes from new ways to give people what they want. By matching creativity and desire, the economy will renew itself.”
Digital Debate – What Should Be Legal?
“Does the entertainment industry has the right to prevent the ‘sharing’ and downloading of digital copyrighted media? What methods should it employ to deter, or stop, the downloading? Is music sharing tantamount to online theft? Or is it the consumer’s right to have unfettered access to online materials, including copyrighted media?” Lawrence Lessig, an expert on Internet law from Stanford University’s Law School, and Matt Oppenheim of the Recording Industry Association of America debate…
The New Outsiders – Really?
“Recently, Central Europe has played host to a new generation of expatriate writers and, some believe, has once again become the displaced kingdom of some of the greatest prose and prose-writers – this time, in English. But outsiders toting backpacks and wielding Platinum Plus cards aren’t the right kind of outsiders for literature. They’re a Mercedes-length from the edge, and literature needs someone on the precipice. It’s dangerous on that precipice, but the danger, well, illuminates the prose. And there’s no more of that danger left in this Europe, once again at the edge of Empire.”
Sandow: A Critic’s Manifesto
Is classical music dying? Maybe. But maybe music critics are partly to blame. “We shouldn’t be boosters. We shouldn’t pretend that everything’s wonderful and glorious, because, first of all, it isn’t, and, even more important, nothing in the world is. I’ll grant that some people idolize classical music, or at least the idea of it, and honestly believe that all classical concerts are wonderful and that there’s no ego or careerism in the classical music world. (Let’s have a moment of silence for that last idea, which I first heard from the bass player in a long-ago metal band, Kingdom Come.) But most of us are more realistic than that, even about things we don’t know much about. So it’s crucial, at least in my view, that classical critics pull no punches when they talk about bad concerts.”
Has Mark Morris Peaked?
Laura Jacobs acknowledges that Mark Morris is the natural heir to Balanchine. But then he peaked. And it’s been downhill ever since. “I became disenchanted with Mark Morris in the 1990s. I tired of a gender neutrality that yet left women with the short end of the stick, mainly because the dances showed so little interest in la femme (these girls are kind of like Anybodys in West Side Story, heartfelt tomboys). And Morris’s gift for metaphor began to seem played out, or perhaps abandoned, as if he was no longer interested in his most fundamental poetic device. Metaphor, after all, is artifice. It was increasingly clear that Morris’s early work was his best work, and it never got better than Dido and Aeneas.”
Art Or Cruel Exploitation?
Santiago Sierra creates “art” that uses people – exploits them, actually. They make powerful messages, but are they really art? He has “created pieces that involved workers from the local underclass being paid to do meaningless tasks: support a piece of Sheetrock at a 65-degree angle for an entire day; sit inside a cardboard box; or push around two-ton blocks of concrete. By designing such deliberately pointless ‘jobs,’ he highlighted the disjunction between such workers and their work, showing labor as an imposed condition rather than a choice one makes. ‘The remunerated worker doesn?t care if you tell him to clean the room or make it dirtier. As long as you pay him, it?s exactly the same. The relationship to work is based only upon money’.”
American Museums Discover Latin America
“American museums, long accustomed to regarding Latin American art as an appendage of other divisions or to ignoring it altogether, are bolstering their commitment to buying, showing, and studying everything from Mexican colonial portraiture to Chilean Surrealism. Two major institutions, the Houston Museum of Fine Arts and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), have recently appointed their first chief curators for Latin American art. Others have held major Latin American shows. Museums across the country have established community groups aimed at drumming up support and interest for their Latin American programs, and dealers say the institutional push into Latin American art is adding momentum to the market.”