Improvisation is America’s great contribution to art – not just in music, but art and acting too. Marlon Brando, Charlie Parker, Jackson Pollock – these were the American originals. “Improvisation is America’s art, its self-expression – and its disaster.”
Tag: 12.11.04
Juggling Rings
A production of Wagner’s complete Ring cycle is always the talk of whatever city is lucky enough to host it. But in London, the unthinkable is about to occur: two simultaneous Rings, being performed in two different opera houses by two different companies. It could be a rare chance to compare and contrast differing visions of arguably the greatest operatic accomplishment of all time. Or it could just be repetitive.
The Wagner Conundrum
Richard Wagner was, by all accounts, a horrible human being, a vicious anti-Semite, and an extremist ideologue. That legacy hasn’t exactly tarnished his musical reputation, but it does give many musicians pause when asked to perform his works. “So, why bother with Wagner at all? Why grant him four long evenings, as in the case of The Ring? … One question is: can we live without it?”
Supreme Court To Hear File-Sharing Arguments
“The Supreme Court agreed Friday to consider whether two internet file-sharing services may be held responsible for their customers’ online swapping of copyright songs and movies. Justices will review a lower ruling in favor of Grokster and StreamCast Networks that came as a blow to recording companies and movie studios seeking to stop the illegal distribution of their works… The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled in August that file-sharing services were not responsible because they don’t have central servers pointing users to copyright material.”
FCC: The Olympics May Be Hazardous To Your Moral Compass
The FCC has asked the NBC television network to turn over tape of the opening ceremonies of last summer’s Olympic Games, so that the agency can investigate viewer complaints about its content. No one seems to know exactly what portion of the Athens ceremony raised hackles with American viewers, but it may have something to do with the partially unclothed state of some of the traditional Olympic poses adopted by actors in the show. Or maybe it was the woman wading in a puddle who “appeared to have been impregnated by someone who was radioactive, but we cannot say with certainty whether that was Greek or just weird.”
Neighborhood Surrealism
Looking at photographs of Toronto’s surreal and gravity-defying new Sharp Centre, one wonders whether such a bizarre and whimsical structure could possibly exist in reality. But as Benjamin Forgey discovered, the building – a huge horizontal rectangle with a distinct crossword-puzzle motif, balanced precariously atop six pairs of stilts – is every bit as real as the photos suggest. “The marvel is threefold: that folks rather enthusiastically allowed this thing to be built, that it works so well as a practical matter, and that, quite simply, it is beautiful.”
Forget Direct-To-Video, How About Direct-To-Phone?
The evolution of cell phone technology is looking an awful lot like the early days of television, when no one was quite sure what direction the new medium would take. At the moment, the strategy of most companies seems to be to throw every available technology at the consumer wall, and see what sticks. “The increasing power of cellphones is shaping innovative forms of compact culture: micro-lit, phone soap operas and made-for-mobile dramas that can be absorbed in a few glances.”
If Only It Weren’t Quite So, Well, Canadian
“Situated between the lordly British and German digs [at the Venice Biennale], Canada’s stage, designed by Milan-based architects for our best artists… is a curiously self-effacing structure, more likely to be found near Georgian Bay than near the Canale di San Marco. Overcoming its cramped, curved interior space has been as much a problem for the artists as their own pieces.”
Coming Soon: Dali Kong
A Canadian artist was gazing at a famous Mondrian painting some years back, when something told him that he’d seen a similar layout before, in his old 1980s-era Atari video game system. “Pac-Mondrian is the meeting ground in arcade-game format between Toru Iwantani’s classic 1980s Atari game Pac-Man and Piet Mondrian’s oil painting, Broadway Boogie Woogie (1942-43), the motionless but vibrant jangle of red, yellow and blue rectangles representing the expatriate Dutch painter’s reaction to the hectic, well-travelled grid of New York in the early 1940s.” The unauthorized mish-mash has become a legitimate Internet art smash, with tens of thousands of visitors playing the game and admiring the art.
The Great Big FCC Road Show
Some FCC commissioners have been taking the broadcast regulation biz on the road lately, hosting public forums in cities across the country. A stop in St. Paul revealed a growing public discontent with corporate consolidation of American mass media, but little consensus over what should be done about it. In Minnesota, where the biggest media presence is actually a public radio network, some activists are stressing the importance of diverse community involvement, while others lament the decline of programming that serves rural residents, such as farm news.