“Alyssa Batula and Yougmoo Kim, from Drexel University, Philadelphia have developed a humanoid robot capable of playing any musical score on the spot. They’re using it to explore musical performance – expression and interaction with other musicians, for example – rather than merely note-playing.”
Tag: 12.17.10
A Change In How Academic Influence Is Measured
“The availability of ‘usage data’ — information on how many times a digital article has been downloaded, and in what context — means that people can track the spread of an idea in a scholarly community using the same principles that epidemiologists use to track the spread of a virus in a village.”
Michigan Governor, US Senator Get Involved In Detroit Symphony Strike
“In an effort to broker a deal in the 10½-week Detroit Symphony Orchestra strike, U.S. Sen. Carl Levin and Gov. Jennifer Granholm today publicly outlined a broad framework for a compromise that essentially splits the financial difference between the two parties with a $36 million package over three years.”
New leadership For Boston Opera
“Opera Boston announced today that Lesley Koenig, a veteran director and arts administrator with experience at the Metropolitan Opera and the San Francisco Ballet, will be its next general manager. Gil Rose, the company’s longstanding music director, has also been named to a new post of artistic director.”
‘The Treehouse’: Frank Gehry Unveils Design for First Australian Building
“The world-renowned architect’s plans for the $150 million[Aus] Dr Chau Chak Wing building, his only in Australia, were unveiled this week at the University of Technology, Sydney.” The business school building is “based on the idea of a tree-house structure. As Frank Gehry has put it, ‘a trunk and core of activity and … branches for people to connect and do their private work’.”
Teaching Performing Artists How to Ask for Money
A Brooklyn choreographer is launching a new contemporary dance festival for which she’s asking participants and fans to raise funds. “It’s part of a movement to get artists comfortable asking people to donate money and fund-raising for projects instead of just waiting for a big patron or government grant.”
Filmmaker Blake Edwards Dead at 88
The director of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, 10, the Pink Panther films and Victor/Victoria “developed an audacious and risque comic style as a producer, director and writer that was rooted in the pratfalls, sight gags and otherwise preposterous sensibilities of pre-sound movie comedy.”
Google Launches Database of 500 Years of Books
The enormous database “consists of the 500 billion words contained in [5.2 million] books published between 1500 and 2008 in English, French, Spanish, German, Chinese and Russian.… [A]nyone with a computer to plug in a string of up to five words and see a graph that charts the phrase’s use over time.”
Germany’s First Hot Playwright Since Brecht?
“The names of the most popular playwrights on German-language stages haven’t changed much in decades, even centuries. Recently, however, marquees from Hamburg to Vienna have to add a new name alongside Shakespeare, Goethe, Schiller and Ibsen – Roland Schimmelpfennig, a 43-year-old Berlin-based author and director.”